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THE FRONTIER 
IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



BY 



FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1920 






Copyright, 1920 

BY 

FREDERICK J. TURNER 



PREFACE 

In republishing these essays in collected form, it has seemed 
best to issue them as they were originally printed, with the 
exception of a few slight corrections of slips in the text and 
V *th the omission of occasional duplication of language in the 
different essays. A considerable part of whatever value they 
may possess arises from the fact that they are commentaries in 
different periods on the central theme of the influence of the 
frontier in American history. Consequently they may have 
some historical significance as contemporaneous attempts of a 
student of American history, at successive transitions in our 
development during the past quarter century to interpret the 
relations of the present to the past. Grateful acknowledgment 
is made to the various societies and periodicals which have 
given permission to reprint the essays. 

Various essays dealing with the connection of diplomatic 
history and the frontier and others stressing the significance of 
the section, or geographic province, in American history, are 
not included in the present collection. Neither the French nor 
the Spanish frontier is within the scope of the volume. 

The future alone can disclose how far these interpretations 
are correct for the age of colonization which came gradually 
to an end with the disappearance of the frontier and free land. ' 
It alone can reveal how much of the courageous, creative 
American spirit, and how large a part of the historic American 
ideals are to be carried over into that new age which is replac- 
ing the era of free lands and of measurable isolation by con- 
solidated and complex industrial development and by increas- 



PREFACE 

ing resemblances and connections between the New World and 
the Old. 

But the larger part of what has been distinctive and valuable 
in America's contribution to the history of the human spirit 
has been due to this nation's peculiar experience in extending 
its type of frontier into new regions; and in creating peaceful 
societies with new ideals in the successive vast and differing 
geographic provinces which together make up the United States. 
Directly or indirectly these experiences shaped the life of the 
Eastern as well as the Western States, and even reacted upon the 
Old World and influenced the direction of its thought and its 
progress. This experience has been fundamental in the eco- 
nomic, political and social characteristics of the American 
people and in their conceptions of their destiny. 

Writing at the close of 1796, the French minister to the 
United States, M. Adet, reported to his government that Jeffer- 
son could not be relied on to be devoted to French interests, 
and he added: "Jefferson, I say, is American, and by that 
name, he cannot be sincerely our friend. An American is the 
born enemy of all European peoples." Obviously erroneous 
as are these words, there was an element of truth in them. If 
we would understand this element of truth, we must study the 
transforming influence of the American wilderness, remote 
from Europe, and by its resources and its free opportunities 
affording the conditions under which a new people, with new 
social and political types and ideals, could arise to play its 
own part in the world, and to influence Europe. 

Frederick J. Turner. 
Harvard University, March, 1920. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Significance of the Frontier in American 

History 1 

11 The First Official Frontier of the Massa- 
chusetts Bay 39 

III The Old West 67 

IV The Middle West 126 - 

V The Ohio Valley in American History . . 157 

VI The Significance of the Mississippi Valley in 

American History 177 

VII The Problem of the West 205 

VIII Dominant Forces in Western Life .... 222 

IX Contributions of the West to American De- 
mocracy 243 

X Pioneer Ideals and the State University . . 269 

XI The West and American Ideals 290 

XII Social Forces in American History . . . 311 

XIII Middle Western Pioneer Democracy . . . 335 

Index 361 



The Significance of the Frontier in American History ^ 

In a recent bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census for 
1890 appear these significant words: "Up to and including 
1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present 
the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies 
of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier 
line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, 
etc., it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the cen- 
sus reports." This brief ofl&cial statement marks the closing 
of a great historic movement. Up to our own day American 
history has been in a large degree the history of the coloniza- 
tion of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, 
its continuous recession, and the advance of American settle- 
ment westward, explain American development. 

1 A paper read at the meeting of the American Historical Associa- 
tion in Chicago, July 12, 1893. It first appeared in the Proceedings 
of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, December 14, 1893, with 
the following note ; " The foundation of this paper is my article en- 
titled ' Problems in American History,' which appeared in The JEgiSy 
a publication of the students of the University of Wisconsin, Novem- 
ber 4, 1892. ... It is gratifying to find that Professor Woodrow Wil- 
son — whose volume on ' Division and Reunion ' in the Epochs of Amer- 
ican History Series, has an appreciative estimate of the importance of 
the West as a factor in American history — accepts some of the views 
set forth in the papers above mentioned, and enhances their value by 
his lucid and suggestive treatment of them in his article in The Forum, 
December, 1893, reviewing Goldwin Smith's ' History of the United 
States.' " The present text is that of the Report of the American His- 
torical Association for 1893, 199-227. It was printed with additions 
in the Fifth Year Book of the National Herbart Society, and in vari- 
ous other publications. 

1 



2 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Behind institutions, behind constitutional forms and modi- 
fications, lie the vital forces that call these organs into life 
and shape them to meet changing conditions. The peculi- 
arity of American institutions is, the fact that they have been 
compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expand- 
ing people — to the changes involved in crossing a continent, 
in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of 
this progress out of the primitive economic and political con- 
ditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life. Said 
Calhoun in 1817, "We are great, and rapidly — I was about 
to say fearfully — growing!"^ So saying, he touched the 
distinguishing feature of American life. All peoples show 
development; the germ theory of politics has been sufficiently 
emphasized. In the case of most nations, however, the de- 
velopment has occurred in a limited area ; and if the nation has 
expanded, it has met other growing peoples whom it has con- 
quered. But in the case of the United States we have a differ- 
ent phenomenon. Limiting our attention to the Atlantic coast, 
we have the familiar phenomenon of the evolution of institu- 
tions in a limited area, such as the rise of representative gov- 
ernment; the differentiation of simple colonial governments 
into complex organs; the progress from primitive industrial 
society, without division of labor, up to manufacturing civiliza- 
tion. But we have in addition to this a recurrence of the 
process of evolution in each western area reached in the process 
of expansion. Thus American development has exhibited not 
merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive 
conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new 
development for that area. American social development has 
been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This 
perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion 
westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with 
"ii 2 '« Abridgment of Debates of Congress," v, p. 706. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 3 

the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominat- 
ing American character. The true point of view in the history 
of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is' the Great West. 
Even the slavery struggle, which is made so exclusive an 
object of attention by writers like Professor von Hoist, occupies 
its important place in American history because of its relation 
to westward expansion. 

In this advance, the frontier is the ositer edge of the wave — 
the meeting point between savagery and civilization. Much 
has been written about the frontier from the point of view of 
border warfare and the chase, but as a field for the serious 
study of the economist and the historian it has been neglected. 

The American frontier is sharply distinguished from the 
European frontier — a fortified boundary line running through 
dense populations. The most significant thing about the 
American frontier is, that it lies at tlie hither edge of free land. 
In the census reports ii is treated as the m.argin of that settle- 
ment which has a density of two or more to the square mile. 
The term is an elastic one, and for our purposes does not need 
sharp definition. We shall consider the whole frontier belt, 
including the Indian country and the outer margin of the " set- 
tled area " of the census reports. This paper will make no 
attempt to treat the subject exhaustively; its aim is siniply 
to call attention to the frontier as a fertile field for investiga- 
tion, and to suggest some of the problems which arise in con- 
nection with it. 

In the settlement of America we have to observe how Euro- 
pean life entered the continent, and how America modified 
and developed that life and reacted on Europe. Our early 
history is the study of European germs developing in an 
American environment. Too exclusive attention has been - 
paid by institutional students to the Germanic origins, too 
little to the American factors. The frontier is the line of/ 



4 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness 
masters the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, indus- 
tries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from 
the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips off 
the garments of civilization and arrays Jiim in the hunting 
shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the 
Cherokee and Iroquois and runs an Indian palisade around 
him. Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and 
plowing with a sharp stick; he shouts the war cry and takes 
the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the fron- 
tier the environment is at first too strong for the man. He 
must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and 
so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the 
Indian trails. Little by little he trarisfo'-ms the wilderness, 
but the outcome is not the old Europe not simply the devel- 
opment of Germanic germs, any more than the first phenom- 
enon was a case of reversion to the Germanic mark. The fact 
is, that here is a new product that is American. At first, the 
frontier was the Atlantic coast. It was the frontier of Europe 
in a very real senile. Moving v/estward, the frontier became 
more and more American. As successive terminal moraines 
result from successive glaciations, so each frontier leaves its 
traces behind it, and when it becomes a settled area the region 
still partakes of the frontier characteristics. Thus the advance 
of the frontier has meant a steady movement away from the 
influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on 
American lines. And to study this advance, the men who 
grew up under these conditions, and the political, economic, 
and social results of it, is to study the really American part 
of our history. 

In the course of the seventeenth century the frontier was 
advanced up the Atlantic river courses, just beyond the " fall 
line," and the tidewater region became the settled area. In 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 5 

the first half of the eighteenth century another advance 
occurred. Traders followed the Delaware and Shawnese 
Indians to the Ohio as early as the end of the first quarter of 
the century.^ Gov. Spotswood, of Virginia, made an expedi- 
tion in 1714 across the Blue Ridge. The end of the first quarter 
of the century saw the advance of the Scotch-Irish and the 
Palatine Germans up the Shenandoah Valley mto the west- 
ern part of Virginia, and along the Piedmont region of the 
Carolinas.* The Germans in New York pushed the fron- 
tier of settlement up the Mohawk to German Flats.^ In Penn- 
sylvania the town of Bedford indicates the line of settlement. 
Settlements had begun on New River, a branch of the Kana- 
wha, and on the sources of the Yadkin and French Broad.® 
The King attempted to arrest the advance by his proclamation 
of 1763,^ forbidding settlements beyond the sources of the 
rivers flowing into the Atlantic; but in vain. In the period 
of the Revolution the frontier crossed the Alleghanies into 
Kentucky and Tennessee, and the upper waters of the Ohio 
were settled.^ When the first census was taken in 1790, the 
continuous settled area was bounded by a line which ran near 
the coast of Maine, and included New England except a portion 
of Vermont and New Hampshire, New York along the Hudson 

3 Bancroft (1860 ed.), iii, pp. 344, 345, citing Logan MSS.; [Mitchell] 
"'Contest in America," etc. (1752), p. 237. 

* Kercheval, " History of the Valley " ; Bemheim, " German Settlements 
in the Carolinas"; Winsor, "Narrative and Critical History of Amer- 
ica," V, p. 304; Colonial Records of North Carolina, iv, p. xx; Weston, 
"Documents Connected with the History of South Carolina," p. 82; 
Ellis and Evans, " History of Lancaster County, Pa.," chs. iii, xxvi. 

^Parkman, " Pontiac," ii; Griffis, "Sir William Johnson," p. 6; 
Simms's " Frontiersmen of New York." 

sJVIonette, "Mississippi Valley," i, p. 311. 

■^Wis. Hist. Cols., xi, p. 50; Hinsdale, "Old Northwest," p. 121; 
Burke, "Oration on Conciliation," Works (1872 ed.), i, p. 473. 

8 Roosevelt, " Winning of the West," and citations there given ; Cutler's 
"Life of Cutler." 



6 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

and up the Mohawk about Schenectady, eastern and southern 
Pennsylvania, Virginia well across the Shenandoah Valley, 
and the Carolinas and eastern Georgia.^ Beyond this region 
of continuous settlement were the small settled areas of Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee, dnd the Ohio, with the mountains inter- 
vening between them and the Atlantic area, thus giving a new 
and important character to the frontier. The isolation of the 
region increased its peculiarly American tendencies, and the 
need of transportation facilities to connect it with the East 
called out important schemes of internal improvement, which 
will be noted farther on. The " West," as a self-conscious sec- 
tion, began to evolve. 

From decade to decade distinct advances of the frontier 
occurred. By the census of 1820 ^^ the settled area included 
Ohio, southern Indiana and Illinois, southeastern Missouri, and 
about one-half of Louisiana. This settled area had surrounded 
Indian areas, and the management of these tribes became an 
object of political concern. The frontier region of the time lay 
along the Great Lakes, where Astor's American Fur Company 
operated in the Indian trade,^^ and beyond the Mississippi, 

9 Scribner's Statistical Atlas, xxxviii, pi. 13 ; McMaster, " Hist, of 
People of U. S.," i, pp. 4, 60, 61 ; Imlay and Filson, " Western Territory 
of America " (London, 1793) ; Rochefoucault-Liancourt, " Travels 
Through the United States of North America" (London, 1799); 
Michaux's " Journal," in Proceedings American Philosophical Society, 
xxvi. No. 129 ; Forman, " Narrative of a Journey Down the Ohio and 
Mississippi in 1780-'90" (Cincinnati, 1888) ; Bartram, "Travels Through 
North Carolina," etc. (London, 1792) ; Pope, " Tour Through the South- 
em and Western Territories," etc. (Richmond, 1792); Weld, "Travels 
Through the States of North America" (London, 1799) ; Baily, "Journal 
of a Tour in the Unsettled States of North America, 1796-'97 " (London, 
1856) ; Pennsylvania Magazine of History, July, 1886; Winsor, "Narra- 
tive and Critical History of America," vii, pp. 491, 492, citations. 

1° Scribner's Statistical Atlas, xxxix. 

^1 Turner, " Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wiscon- 
sin " (Johns Hopkins University Studies, Series ix), pp. 61flF. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 7 

where Indian traders extended their activity even to the Rocky 
Mountains; Florida also furnished frontier conditions. The 
Mississippi River region was the scene of typical frontier settle- 
ments.^- 

The rising steam navigations^ on western waters, the opening 
of the Erie Canal, and the westward extension of cotton^^ cul- 
ture added five frontier states to the Union in this period. 
Gru'nd, writing in 1836, declares: "It appears then that the 
universal disposition of Americans to emigrate to the western 
wilderness, in order to enlarge their dominion over inanimate 
nature, is the actual result of an expansive power which is 
inherent in them, and which by continually agitating all classes 
of society is constantly throwing a large portion of the whole 
population on the extreme confines of the State, in order to gain 
space for its development. Hardly is a new State of Territory 
formed before the same principle manifests itself again and 
gives rise to a further emigration ; and so is it destined to go on 
until a physical barrier must finally obstruct its progress." ^^ 

^-Monette, "History of the Mississippi Valley," ii; Flint, "Travels 
and Residence in Mississippi," Flint, " Geography and History of the 
Western Stales," "Abridgment of Debates of Congress," vii, pp. 397, 
398, 404; Holmes, "Account of the U. S."; Kingdom, "America and the 
British Colonies" (London, 1820) ; Grmid, "Americans," ii, chs. i, iii, vi 
(although writing in 1836, he treats of conditions that grew out of 
■western advance from the era of 1820 to that time) ; Peck, '' Guide for 
Emigrants" (Boston, 1831) ; Darby, "Emigrants' Guide to Western and 
Southwestern States and Territories"; Dana, "Geographical Sketches in 
the Western Country"; Kinzie, "Waubun"; Keating, "Narrative of 
Long's Expedition"; Schoolcraft, "Discovery of the Sources of the 
Mississippi River," " Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi 
Valley," and "Lead Mines of the Missouri"; Andreas, "History of Illi- 
nois," i, 86-99; Hurlbut, "Chicago Antiquities"; McKenney, "Tour to 
the Lakes"; Thomas, "Travels Tlirough the Western Country," etc. 
(Auburn, N. Y., 1819). 

13 Darby, "Emigrants' Guide," pp. 272 ff; Benton, "Abridgment of 
Debates," vii, p. 397. 

i*De Bow's Review, iv, p. 254; xvii, p. 428. 

15 Grund, " Americans," ii, p. 8. 



8 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

In the middle of this century the line indicated by the present 
eastern boundary of Indian Territory, Nebraska, and Kansas 
marked the frontier of the Indian country.^*^ Minnesota and 
Wisconsin still exhibited frontier conditions,^^ but the dis- 
tinctive frontier of the period is found in California, where 
the gold discoveries had sent a sudden tide of adventurous 
miners, and in Oregon, and the settlements in Utah.^^ As the 
frontier had leaped over the Alleghanies, so now it skipped 
the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains; and in the same 
way that the advance of the frontiersmen beyond the Alle- 
ghanies had caused the rise of important questions of trans- 
portation and internal improvement, so now the settlers beyond 
the Rocky Mountains needed means of communication with 
the East, and in the furnishing of these arose the settlement 
of the Great Plains and the development of still another kind 

16 Peck, "New Guide to the West" (Cincinnati, 1848), ch. iv; Park- 
man, "Oregon Trail"; Hall, "The West" (Cincinnati, 1848); Pierce, 
"Incidents of Western Travel"; Murray, "Travels in North America"; 
Lloyd, " Steamboat Directory" (Cincinnati, 1856); "Forty Days in a 
Western Hotel" (Chicago), in Putnam'' s Magazine, December, 1894; 
Mackay, "The Western World," ii, ch. ii, iii; Meeker, "Life in the 
West"; Bogen, "German in America" (Boston, 1851); Olmstead, 
"Texas Journey"; Greeley, "Recollections of a Busy Life"; Schouler, 
"History of the United States," v, 261-267; Peyton, "Over the Alle- 
ghanies and Across the Prairies" (London, 1870); Loughborough, 
"The Pacific Telegraph and Railway" (St. Louis, 1849); Whitney, 
"Project for a Railroad to the Pacific" (New York, 1849); Peyton, 
" Suggestions on Railroad Communication with the Pacific, and the 
Trade of China and the Indian Islands"; Benton, "Highway to the 
Pacific" (a speech delivered in the U. S. Senate, December 16, 1850). 

1^ A writer in The Home Missionary (1850), p. 239, reporting Wiscon- 
sin conditions, exclaims: "Think of this, people of the enlightened East. 
What an example, to come from the very frontier of civilization! " But 
one of the missionaries writes : " In a few years Wisconsin will no longer 
be considered as the West, or as an outpost of civilization, any more than 
Western New York, or the Western Reserve." 

1^ Bancroft (H. H.), "History of California, History of Oregon, and 
Popular Tribunals " ; Shinn, " Mining Camps." 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER # 

of frontier life. Railroads, fostered by land grants, sent an 
increasing tide of immigrants into the Far West. The United 
States Army fought a series of Indian wars in Minnesota, 
Dakota, and the Indian Territory. 

By 1880 the settled area had been pushed into northern 
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, along Dakota rivers, and 
in the Black Hills region, and was ascending the rivers of Kan- 
sas and Nebraska. The development of mines in Colorado had 
drawn isolated frontier settlements into that region, and Mon- 
tana and Idaho were receiving settlers. The frontier was found 
in these mining camps and the ranches of the Great Plains. 
The superintendent of the census for 1890 reports, as previously 
stated, that the settlements of the West lie so scattered over 
the region that there can no longer be said to be a frontier line. 

In these successive frontiers we find natural boundary lines 
which have served to mark and to affect the characteristics of 
the frontiers, namely: the "fall line;" the Alleghany Moun- 
tains; the Mississippi; the Missouri where its direction ap- 
proximates north and south ; the line of the arid lands, approx- 
imately the ninety-ninth meridian; and the Rocky Mountains. 
The fall line marked the frontier of the seventeenth century; 
the Alleghanies that of the eighteenth; the Mississippi that of 
the first quarter of the nineteenth; the Missouri that of the 
middle of this century (omitting the California movement) ; 
and the belt of the Rocky Mountains and the arid tract, the 
present frontier. Each was won by a series of Indian wars. 

At the Atlantic frontier one can study the germs of proces- 
ses repeated at each successive frontier. We have the complex 
European life sharply precipitated by the wilderness into the 
simplicity of primitive conditions. The first frontier had to 
meet its Indian question, its question of the disposition of the 
public domain, of the means of intercourse with older settle- 
ments, of the extension of political organization, of religious 



10 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

and educational activity. And the settlement of these and 
similar questions for one frontier served as a guide for the 
next. The American student needs not to go to the " prim 
little townships of Sleswick " for illustrations of the law of 
continuity and development. For example, he may study the 
origin of our land policies in the colonial land policy; he may 
see how the system grew by adapting the statutes to the customs 
of the successive frontiers.^^ He may see how the mining 
experience in the lead regions of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa 
was applied to the mining laws of the Sierras,"^ and how our 
Indian policy has been a series of experimentations on succes- 
sive frontiers. Each tier of new States has found in the older 
ones material for its constitutions.^^ Each frontier has made 
similar contributions to American character, as will be dis- 
cussed farther on. 

But with all these similarities there are essential differences, 
due to the place element and the time element. It is evident 
that the farming frontier of the Mississippi Valley presents 
different conditions from the mining frontier of the Rocky 
Mountains. The frontier reached by the Pacific Railroad, sur- 
veyed into rectangles, guarded by the United States Army, and 
recruited by the daily immigrant ship, moves forward at a 
swifter pace and in a different way than the frontier reached 
by the birch canoe or the pack horse. The geologist traces 
patiently the shores of ancient seas, maps their areas, and com- 
pares the older and the newer. It would be a work worth the 
historian's labors to mark these various frontiers and in detail 
compare one with another. Not only would there result a 

i» See the suggestive paper by Prof. Jesse Macy, " The Institutional 
Beginnings of a Western State." 

20 Shinn, " Mining Camps." 

21 Compare Thorpe, in Annals American Academy of Political and 
Social Science, September, 1891; Bryce, "American Commonwealth" 
(1888), ii, p. 689. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 11 

more adequate conception of American development and char- 
asteristics, but invaluable additions would be made to the his- 
tory of society. 

Loria,^- the Italian economist, has urged the study of colo- 
nial life as an aid in understanding the stages of European 
development, affirming that colonial settlement is for economic 
science what the mountain is for geology, bringing to light 
primitive stratifications. " America," he says, " has the key to 
the historical enigma which Europe has sought for centuries in 
vain, and the land which has no history reveals luminously the 
course of universal history." There is much truth in this. 
The United States lies like a huge page in the history of 
society. Line by line as we read this continental page from 
West to East we find the record of social evolution. It begins 
with the Indian and the hunter ; it goes on to tell of the disin- 
tegration of savagery by the entrance of the trader, the path- 
finder of civilization; we read the annals of the pastoral stage 
in ranch life; the exploitation of the soil by the raising of 
unrotated crops of corn and wheat in sparsely settled farming 
communities; the intensive culture of the denser farm settle- 
ment; and finally the manufacturing organization with city and 
factory system.-^ This page is familiar to the student of cen- 
sus statistics, but how little of it has been used by our histo- 
rians. Particularly in eastern States this page is a palimpsest. / 
What is now a manufacturing State was in an earlier decade 
an area of intensive farming. Earlier yet it had been a wheat 
area, and still earlier the " range " had attracted the cattle- 
herder. Thus Wisconsin, now developing manufacture, is a 

22Loria, Analisi delta Proprieta Capitalista, ii, p. 15. 

23 Compare " Observations on the North American Land Company," 
London, 1796, pp. xv, 144 ; Logan, " History of Upper South Carolina," i, 
pp. 149-151 ; Turner, " Character and Influence of Indian Trade in Wis- 
consin," p. 18; Peck, "New Guide for Emigrants" (Boston, 1837), ch. 
iv; "Compendium Eleventh Census," i, p. xl. 



12 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY ., 

11 
State with varied agricultural interests. But earlier it was 

given over to almost exclusive grain-raising, like North Dakota 

at the present time. 

Each of these areas has had an influence in our economic 
and political history; the evolution of each into a higher 
stage has worked political transformations. But what consti- 
tutional historian has made any adequate attempt to interpret 
political facts by the li^ht of these social areas and changes? "^ 

The Atlantic frontier was compounded of fisherman, fur- 
trader, miner, cattle-raiser, and farmer. Excepting the fisher- 
man, each type of industry was on the march toward the West, 
impelled by an irresistible attraction. Each passed in succes- 
sive waves across the continent. Stand at Cumberland Gap 
and watch the procession of civilization, marching single file — 
the buff'alo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian, 
the fur-trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer farmer 
— and the frontier has passed by. Stand at South Pass in the 
Rockies a century later and see the same procession with 
wider intervals between. The unequal rate of advance com- 
pels us to distinguish the frontier into the trader's frontier, the 
rancher's frontier, or the minei's frontier, and the farmer's 
frontier. When the mines and tlie cow pens were still near 
the fall line the traders' pack trains were tinkling across the 
Alleghanies, and the French on the Great Lakes were fortify- 
ing their posts, alarmed by the British trader's birch canoe. 
When the trappers scaled the Rockies, the farmer was still 
near the mouth of the Missouri. 

Why was it that the Indian trader pi ssed so rapidly across 
the continent? What eff"ects followed from the trader's fron- 
tier? The trade was coeval with American discovery. The 
Norsemen, Vespuccius, Venazani, Hudson, John Smith, all 



**See post, for illustrations of the political accompaniments of 
changed industrial conditions. 



w 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 13 

trafficked for furs. The Plymouth pilgrims settled in Indian 
cornfields, and their first return cargo was of beaver and lum- 
ber. The records of the various New England colonies show 
how steadily exploration was carried into the wilderness by 
this trade. Wliat is true for New England is, as would be 
expected, even plainer for the rest of the colonies. All along 
the coast from Maine to Georgia the Indian trade opened up 
the river courses. Steadily the trader passed westward, utiliz- 
ing the older lines of French trade. The Ohio, the Great 
Lakes, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Platte, the lines 
of western advance, w'ere ascended by traders. They found 
the passes in the Rocky Mountains and guided Lewis and 
Clark,"^ Fremont, and Bidwell. The explanation of the ra- 
pidity of this advance is connected with the effects of the 
trader on the Indian. The trading post left the unarmed 
tribes at the mercy of those that had purchased fire-arms — a 
truth which the Iroquois Indians wrote in blood, and so the 
remote and unvisited tribes gave eager welcome to the trader. 
" The savages," wroLe La Salle, " take better care of us French 
than of their own children; from us only can they get guns 
and goods." This accounts for the trader's power and the 
rapidity of his advance. Thus the disintegrating forces of 
civilization entered the wilderness. Every river valley and 
Indian trail became a fissure in Indian society, and so that 
society became honeycombed. Long before the pioneer farmer 
appeared on the scene, primitive Indian life had passed away. 
The farmers met Indians armed with guns. The trading fron- 
tier, while steadily undermining Indian power by making the 
tribes ultimately dependent on the whites, yet, through its 
sale of guns, gave to the Indian increased power of resistance 
to the farming frontier. French colonization was dominated 

25 But Lewis and Clark were the first to explore the route from th« 
Missouri to the Columbia. 



14 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

by its trading frontier; English colonization by its farming 
frontier. There was an antagonism between the two frontiers 
as between the two nations. Said Duquesne to the Iroquois, 
" Are you ignorant of the difference between the king of Eng- 
land and the king of France? Go see the forts that our king 
has established and you will see that you can still hunt under 
their very walls. They have been placed for your advantage 
in places which you frequent. The English, on the contrary, 
are no sooner in possession of a place than the game is driven 
away. The forest falls before them as they advance, and the 
soil is laid bare so that you can scarce find the wherewithal to 
erect a shelter for the night." 

And yet, in spite of this opposition of the interests of the 
trader and the farmer, the Indian trade pioneered the way 
for civilization. The buffalo trail became the Indian trail, 
and this became the trader's "trace;" the trails widened into 
roads, and the roads into turnpikes, and these in turn were 
transformed into railroads. The same origin can be shown 
for the railroads of the South, the Far West, and the Dominion 
of Canada.-^ The trading posts reached by these trails were 
on the sites of Indian villages which had been placed in posi- 
tions suggested by nature; and these trading posts, situated so 
as to command the water systems of the country, have grown 
into such cities as Albany, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, St. 
Louis, Council Bluffs, and Kansas City. Thus civilization in 
America has followed the arteries made by geology, pouring 
an ever richer tide through them, until at last the slender paths 
of aboriginal intercourse have been broadened and interwoven 
into the complex mazes of modern commercial lines; the wil- 

26 " Narrative and Critical History of America," viii, p. 10 ; Sparks' 
" Washington Works," ix, pp. 303, 327 ; Logan, " History of Upper South 
Carolina," i; McDonald, "Life of Kenton," p. 72; Cong. Record, xxiii, 
p. 57. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 15 

derness has been interpenetrated by lines of civilization grow- 
ing ever more numerous. It is like the steady growth of a 
complex nervous system for the originally simple, inert con- 
tinent. If one would understand why we are to-day one 
nation, rather than a collection of isolated states, he must 
study this economic and social consolidation of the country. 
In this progress from savage conditions lie topics for the 
evolutionist.^'^ 

The effect of the Indian frontier as a consolidating agent in 
our history is important. From the close of the seventeenth 
century various intercolonial congresses have been called to 
treat with Indians and establish common measures of defense. 
Particularism was strongest in colonies with no Indian frontier. 
This frontier stretched along the western border like a cord of 
union. The Indian was a conomon danger, demanding united 
action. Most celebrated of these conferences was the Albany 
congress of 1754, called to treat with the Six Nations, and to 
consider plans of union. Even a cursory reading of the plan 
proposed by the congress reveals the importance of the frontier. 
The powers of the general council and the officers were, chiefly, 
the determination. of peace and war with the Indians, the regu- 
lation of Indian trade, the purchase of Indian lands, and the 
creation and government of new settlements as a security 
against the Indians. It is evident that the unifying tenden- 
cies of the Revolutionary period were facilitated by the pre- 
vious cooperation in the regulation of the frontier In this con- 
nection may be mentioned the importance of the frontier, from 
that day to this, as a military training school, keeping alive 
the power of resistance to aggression, and developing the stal- 
wart and rugged qualities of the frontiersman. 

2^ On the effect of the fur trade in opening the routes of migration, 
see the author's " Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wis- 



li THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

It would not be possible in the limits of this paper to trace 
the other frontiers across the continent. Travelers of the 
eighteenth century found the " cowpens " among the cane- 
brakes and peavine pastures of the South, and the " cow 
drivers " took their droves to Charleston, Philadelphia, and 
New York.^* Travelers at the close of the War of 1812 met 
droves of more than a thousand cattle and swine from the 
interior of Ohio going to Pennsylvania to fatten for the Phila- 
delphia market.-^ The ranges of the Great Plains, with ranch 
and cowboy and nomadic life, are things of yesterday and of 
to-day. The experience of the Carolina cowpens guided the 
ranchers of Texas. One element favoring the rapid extension 
of the rancher's frontier is the fact that in a remote country 
lacking transportation facilities the product must be in small 
bulk, or must be able to transport itself, and the cattle raiser 
could easily drive his product to market. The effect of these 
great ranches on the subsequent agrarian history of the local- 
ities in which they existed should be studied. 

The maps of the census reports show an uneven advance of 
the farmer's frontier, with tongues of settlement pushed for- 
ward and with indentations of wilderness. In part this is due 
to Indian resistance, in part to tlie location of river valleys 
and passes, in part to the unequal force of the centers of fron- 
tier attraction. Among the important centers of attraction 
may be mentioned the following: fertile and favorably situated 
soils, salt springs, mines, and army posts. 

The frontier army post, serving to protect the settlers from 
the Indians, has also acted as a wedge to open the Indian 
country, and has been a nucleus for settlement.^*^ In this con- 

28 Lodge, "English Colonies," p. 152 and citations; Logan, "Hist, of 
Upper South Carolina," i, p. 15L 
29 Flint, "Recollections," p. 9. 
80 See Monette, "Mississippi Valley," i, p. 344. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 17 

nection mention should also be made of the government mili- 
tary and exploring expeditions in determining the lines of set- 
tlement. But all the more important expeditions were greatly 
indebted to the earliest pathmakers, the Indian guides, the 
traders and trappers, and the French voyageurs, who were 
inevitable parts of governmental expeditions from the days of 
Lewis and Clark.^^ Each expedition was an epitome of the 
previous factors in western advance. 

In an interesting monograph, Victor Hehn ^- has traced the 
effect of salt upon early European development, and has 
pointed out how it affected the lines of settlement and the form 
of administration. A similar study might be made for the 
salt springs of the United States. The early settlers were tied 
to the coast by the need of salt, without which ihey could not 
preserve their meats or live in comfort. Writing in 1752, 
Bishop Spangenburg says of a colony for which he was seek- 
ing lands in North Carolina, " They will require salt & other 
necessaries which they can neither manufacture nor raise. 
Either they must go to Charleston, which is 300 miles distant 
... Or else they must go to Boling's Point in V*^ on a 
branch of the James & is also 300 miles from here . . . 
Or else they must go down the Roanoke — I know not how 
many miles — where salt is brought up from the Cape Fear." ^^ 
This may serve as a typical illustration. An annual pilgrim- 
age to the coast for salt thus became essential. Taking flocks 
or furs and ginseng root, the early settlers sent their pack trains 
after seeding time each year to the coast.^* This proved to be 
an important educational influence, since it was almost the 

siCoues', "Lewis and Clark's Expedition," i, pp. 2, 253-259; Benton, 
in Cong. Record, xxiii, p. 57. 

32 Helm, Das Salz (Berlin, 1873). 

33 Col. Records of N. C, v, p. 3. 

3* Findley, " History of the Insurrection in the Four Western Counties 
of Pennsylvania in the Year 1794" (Philadelphia, 1796), p. 35. 



18 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

only way in which the pioneer learned what was going on in 
the East. But when discovery was made of the salt springs 
of the Kanawha, and the Holslon, and Kentucky, and central 
New York, the West began to be freed from dependence on 
the coast. It was in part the effect of finding these salt springs 
that enabled settlement to cross the mountains. 

From the time the mountains rose between the pioneer and 
[ the seaboard, a new order of Americanism arose. The West 
1 and the East began to get out of touch of each other. The 
' settlements from the sea to the mountains kept connection 
with the rear and had a certain solidarity. But the over-moun- 
tain men grew more and more independent. The East took a 
narrow view of American advance, and nearly lost these men. 
Kentucky and Tennessee history bears abundant witness to the 
truth of this statement. The East began to try to hedge and 
limit westward expansion. Though Webster could declare 
that there were no Alleghanies in his politics, yet in politics in 
general they were a very solid factor. 

The exploitation of the beasts took hunter and trader to the 
west, the exploitation of the grasses took the rancher west, 
and the exploitation of the virgin soil of the river valleys and 
prairies attracted the farmer. Good soils have been the most 
continuous attraction to the farmer's frontier. The land hun- 
ger of the Virginians drew them down the rivers into Carolina, 
in early colonial days; the search for soils took the Massa- 
chusetts men to Pennsylvania and to New York. As the east- 
ern lands were taken up migration flowed across them to the 
west. Daniel Boone, the great backwoodsman, who combined 
the occupations of hunter, trader, cattle-raiser, farmer, and 
surveyor — learning, probably from the traders, of the fer- 
tility of the lands of the upper Yadkin, where the traders were 
wont to rest as they took their way to the Indians, left his 
Pennsylvania home with his father, and passed down the 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 19 

Great Valley road to that stream. Learning from a trader 
of the game and rich pastures of Kentucky, he pioneered the 
way for the farmers to that region. Thence he passed to the 
frontier of Missouri, where his settlement was long a landmark 
on the frontier. Here again he helped to open the way for 
civilization, finding salt licks, and trails, and land. His son 
was among the earliest trappers in the passes of the Rocky 
Mountains, and his party are said to have been the first to camp 
on the present site of Denver. His grandson, Col. A. J. Boone, 
of Colorado, was a power among the Indians of the Rocky 
Mountains, and was appointed an agent by the government. 
Kit Carson's mother was a Boone.^^ Thus this family epi- 
tomizes the backwoodsman's advance across the continent. 

The farmer's advance came in a distinct series of waves. In 
Peck's New Guide to the West, published in Boston in 1837, 
occurs this suggestive passage: 

Generally, in all the western settlements, three 
classes, like the waves of the ocean, have rolled 
one after the other. First comes the pioneer, who 
depends for the subsistence of his family chiefly 
upon the natural growth of vegetation, called the 
" range," and the proceeds of hunting. His imple- 
ments of agriculture are rude, chiefly of his own 
make, and his efforts directed mainly to a crop of 
corn and a " truck patch." The last is a rude 
garden for growing cabbage, beans, corn for roast- 
ing ears, cucumbers, and potatoes. A log cabin, 
and, occasionally, a stable and corn-crib, and a 
field of a dozen acres, the timber girdled or " dead • 
ened," and fenced, are enough for his occupancy. 
It is quite immaterial whether he ever becomes the 

"Hale, "Daniel Boone" (pamphlet). 



29 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

owner of the soil. He is the occupant for the time 
being, pays no rent, and feels as independent as the 
" lord of the manor." With a horse, cow, and one 
or two breeders of swine, he strikes into the woods 
with his family, and becomes the founder of a new 
county, or perhaps state. He builds his cabin, 
gathers around him a few other families of similar 
tastes and habits, and occupies till the range is 
somewhat subdued, and hunting a little precarious, 
or, which is more frequently the case, till the neigh- 
bors crowd around, roads, bridges, and fields annoy 
him, and he lacks elbow room. The preemption 
law enables him to dispose of his cabin and corn- 
field to the next class of emigrants; and, to employ 
his own figures, he " breaks for the high timber," 
" clears out for the Nev/ Purchase," or migrates to 
Arkansas or Texas, to work the same process over. 

The next class of emigrants purchase the lands, 
add field to field, clear out the roads, throw rough 
bridges over the streams, put up hewn log houses 
with glass windows and brick or stone chimneys, 
occasionally plant orchards, build mills, school- 
houses, court-houses, etc., and exhibit the picture 
and forms of plain, frugal, civilized life. 

Another wave rolls on. The men of capital and 
enterprise come. The settler is ready to sell out 
and take the advantage of the rise in property, 
push farther into the interior and become, him- 
self, a man of capital and enterprise in turn. The 
small village rises to a spacious town or city; sub- 
stantial edifices of brick, extensive fields, orchards, 
gardens, colleges, and churches are seen. Broad- 
cloths, silks, leghorns, crapes, and all the refine- 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 21 

merits, luxuries, elegancies, frivolities, and fash- 
ions are in vogue. Thus wave after wave is roll- 
ing westward; the real Eldorado is still farther 
on. 

A portion of the two first classes remain station- 
ary amidst the general movement, improve their 
habits and condition, and rise in the scale of 
society. 

The writer has traveled much amongst the first 
class, the real pioneers. He has lived many years 
in connection with the second grade; and now the 
third wave is sweeping over large districts of Indi- 
ana, Illmois, and Missouri. Migration has become 
almost a habit in the West. Hundreds of men can 
be found, not over 50 years of age, who have 
settled for the fourth, fifth, or sixth time on a new 
spot. To sell out and remove only a few hundred 
miles makes up a portion of the variety of back- 
woods life and manners.^^ /'^ 

Omitting those of the pioneer farmers who move from the 
love of adventure, the advance of the more steady farmer is 
easy to understand. Obviously the immigrant was attracted 
by the cheap lands of the frontier, and even the native farmer 
felt their influence strongly. Year by year the farmers who 
lived on soil whose returns were diminished by unrotated 
crops were ofi"ered the virgin soil of the frontier at nominal 
prices. Their growing families demanded more lands, and 
these were dear. The competition of the unexhausted, cheap, 

36 Compare Baily, " Tour in the Unsettled Parts of North America " 
(London, 1856), pp. 217-219, where a similar analysis is made for 1796. 
See also Collot, "Journey in North America" (Paris, 1826), p. 109; 
"Observations on the North American Land Company" (London, 1796), 
pp. XV, 144; Logan, "History of Upper South Carolina." 



22 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

and easily tilled prairie lands compelled the farmer either to 
go west and continue the exliaustion of the soil on a new 
frontier, or to adopt intensive culture. Thus the census of 
1890 shows, in the Northwest, many counties in which there 
is an absolute or a relative decrease of population. These 
States have been sending farmers to advance the frontier on 
the plains, and have themselves begun to turn to intensive 
farming and to manufacture. A decade before this, Ohio had 
shown the same transition stage. Thus the demand for land 
and the love of wilderness freedom drew the frontier ever 
onward. 

Having now roughly outlined the various kinds of frontiers, 
and their modes of advance, chiefly from the point of view of 
the frontier itself, we may next inquire what were the influences 
on the East and on the Old World. A rapid enumeration of 
some of the more noteworthy eff'ects is all that I have time for. 

First, we note that the frontier promoted the formation of a 
composite nationality for the American people. The coast was 
preponderantly English, but the later tides of continental immi- 
gration flowed across to the free lands. This was the case 
from the early colonial days. The Scotch-Irish and the Pala- 
: tine Germans, or " Pennsylvania Dutch," furnished the dom- 
inant element in the stock of the colonial frontier. With these 
peoples were also the freed indented servants, or redemptioners, 
who at the expiration of their time of service passed to the 
frontier. Governor Spotswood of^^^Virginia writes in 1717, 
" The inhabitants of our frontiers are composed generally of 
such as have been transported hither as servants, and, being 
out of their time, settle themselves where land is to be taken 
up and that will produce the necessarys of life with little 
labour." ^' Very generally these redemptioners were of non- 

^"^ " Spotswood Papers," in Collections of Virginia Historical Society, 
i, ii. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 23 

English stock. In the crucible of the frontier the immigrants 
were Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race, 
English in neither nationality nor characteristics. The process \^ 
has gone on from the early days to our own. Burke and other 
writers in the middle of the eighteenth century believed that 
Pennsylvania ^^ was " threatened with the danger of being 
wholly foreign in language, manners, and perhaps even inclina- 
tions." The German and Scotch-Irish elements in the frontier 
of the South were only less great. In the middle of the present 
century the German element in Wisconsin was already so 
considerable that leading publicists looked to the creation of a 
German state out of the commonwealth by concentrating their 
colonization.^^ Such examples teach us to beware of misinter- 
preting the fact that there is a common English speech in 
America into a belief that the stock is also English. 

In another way the advance of the frontier decreased our 
dependence on England. The co^t, particularly of the South, 
lacked diversified industries, and was dependent on England 
for the bulk of its supplies. In the South there was even a 
dependence on the Northern colonies for articles of food. 
Governor Glenn, of South Carolina, writes in the middle of the 
eighteenth century : " Our trade with New York and Philadel- 
phia was of this sort, draining us of all the little money and 
bills we could gather from other places for their bread, flour, 
beer, hams, bacon, and other things of their produce, all which, 
except beer, our new townships begin to supply us with, which 
are settled with very industrious and thriving Germans. This 
no doubt diminishes the number of shipping and the appear- 
ance of our trade, but it is far from being a detriment to us." *^ 

88 [Burke], "European Settlements" (1765 ed.), ii, p. 200. 
38 Everest, in " Wisconsin Historical Collections," xii, pp. 7 ff. 
40 Weston, " Documents connected with History of South Carolina," p. 
61. 



24 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Before long the frontier created a demand for merchants. As 
it retreated from the coast it became less and less possible for 
England to. bring her supplies directly to the consumer's 
wharfs, and carry away staple crops, and staple crops began 
to give way to diversified agriculture for a time. The effect 
of this phase of the frontier action upon the northern section 
is perceived when we realize how the advance of the frontier 
aroused seaboard cities like Boston, New York, and Baltimore, 
to engage in rivalry for what Washington called " the exten- 
sive and valuable trade of a rising empire." 

The legislation which most developed the powers of the 
national government, and played the largest part in its activ- 
ity, was conditioned on the frontier. Writers have discussed 
the subjects of tariff, land, and internal improvement, as sub- 
sidiary to the slavery question. But when American history 
comes to be rightly viewed it will be seen that the slavery 
question is an incident. In the period from the end of the first 
half of the present century to the close of the Civil War slav- 
ery rose to primary, but far from exclusive, importance. But 
this does not justify Dr. von Hoist (to take an example) in 
treating our constitutional history in its formative period down 
to 1828 in a single volume, giving six volumes chiefly to the 
history of slavery from 1828 to 1861, under the title " Constitu- 
tional History of the United States." The growth of national- 
ism and the evolution of American political institutions were 
dependent on the advance of the frontier. Even so recent a 
writer as Rhodes, in his " History of the United States since the 
Compromise of 1850," has treated the legislation called out by 
the western advance as incidental to the slavery struggle. 

This is a wrong perspective. The pioneer needed the goods 
of the coast, and so the grand series of internal improvement 
and railroad legislation began, with potent nationalizing effects. 
Over internal improvements occurred great debates, in which 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 25 

grave constitutional questions were discussed. Sectional 
groupings appear in the votes, profoundly significant for the 
historian. Loose construction increased as the nation marched 
westward*^ But the West was not content with bringing the 
farm to the factory. Under the lead of Clay — " Harry of the 
West " — protective tariffs were passed, with the cry of bring- 
ing the facLory to the farm. The disposition of the public 
lands was a third important subject of national legislation 
influenced by the frontier. 

The public domain has been a force of profound importance 
in the nationalization and development of the government. 
The effects of the struggle of the landed and the landless 
States, and of the Ordinance of 1787, need no discussion.*^ 
Administratively the frontier called out some of the highest and 
most vitalizing activities of the general government. The pur- 
chase of Louisiana was perhaps the constitutional turning point 
in the history of the Republic, inasmuch as it afforded both a 
new area for national legislation and the occasion of the down- 
fall of the policy of strict construction. But the purchase of 
Louisiana was called out by frontier needs and demands. As 
frontier States accrued to the Union the national power grew. 
In a speech on the dedication of the Calhoun monument Mr. 
Lamar explained : " In 1789 the States were the creators of the 
Federal Government; in 1861 the Federal Government was 
the creator of a large majority of the States." 

When we consider the public domain from the point of view 
of the sale and disposal of the public lands we are again 
brought face to face with the frontier. The policy of the 

*i See, for example, the speech of Clay, in the House of Representa- 
tives, January 30, 1824. 

*2 See the admirable monograph by Prof. H. B. Adams, " Maryland's 
Influence on the Land Cessions " ; and also President Welling, in Papers 
American Historical Association, iii, p. 411. 



26 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

United States in dealing with its lands is in sharp contrast 
with the European system of scientific administration. Efforts 
to make this domain a source of revenue, and to withhold it 
from emigrants in order that settlement might be compact, 
were in vain. The jealousy and the fears of the East were 
powerless in the face of the demands of the frontiersmen. 
John Quincy Adams was obliged to confess : " My own system 
of administration, which was to make the national domain the 
inexliaustible fund for progressive and unceasing internal 
improvement, has failed." The reason is obvious; a system 
of administration was not what the West demanded; it wanted 
land. Adams states the situation as follows: "The slavehold- 
ers of the South have bought the cooperation of the western 
country by the bribe of the western lands, abandoning to the 
new Western States their own proportion of the public prop- 
erty and aiding them in the design of grasping all the lands 
into their own hands. Thomas H.. Benton was the author of 
this system, which he brought forward as a substitute for the 
American system of Mr. Clay, and to supplant him as the 
leading statesman of the West. Mr. Clay, by his tariff com- 
promise with Mi-. Calhoun, abandoned his own American sys- 
tem. At the same time he brought forward a plan for dis- 
tributing among all the States of the Union the proceeds of the 
sales of the public lands. His bill for that purpose passed 
both Houses of Congress, but was vetoed by President Jackson, 
who, in his annual message of December, 1832, formally recom- 
mended that all public lands should be gratuitously given 
away to individual adventurers and to the Spates in which 
the lands are situated.^^ 

"No subject," said Henry Clay, "which has presented 
itself to the present, or perhaps any preceding. Congress, is of 
greater magnitude than that of the public lands." \^Tien we 

43 Adams' Memoirs, ix, pp. 247, 248. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 27 

consider the far-reaching effects of the government's land 
policy upon political, economic, and social aspects of Ameri- 
can life, we are disposed to agree with him. But this legisla- 
tion was framed under frontier influences, and under the lead 
of Western statesmen like Benton and Jackson. Said Senator 
Scott of Indiana in 1841 : " I consider the preemption law 
merely declaratory of the custom or common law of the set- 
tlers." 

It is safe to say that the legislation with regard to land, 
tariff, and internal improvements — the American system of 
the nationalizing Whig party — was conditioned on frontier 
ideas and needs. But it was not merely in legislative action 
that the frontier worked against the sectionalism of the coast. 
The eciHiomiGand--sacial characteristics _oLlhe frontier worked 
against sectionalism. The men of the frontier had closer 
resemblances to the Middle region than to either of the other 
sections. Pennsylvania had been the seed-plot of frontier 
emigration, and, although she passed on her settlers along the 
Great Valley into the west of Virginia and the Carolinas, yet 
the industrial society of these Southern frontiersmen was 
always more like that of the Middle region than like that of 
the tide-water portion of the South, which later came to spread 
its industrial type throughout the South. 

The Middle region, entered by New York harbor, was an 
open door to all Europe. The tide-water part of the South 
represented typical Englishmen, modified by a warm climate 
and servile labor, and living in baronial fashion on great plan- 
tations; New England stood for a special English movement — 
Puritanism. The Middle region was less English than the 
other sections. It had a wide mixture of nationalities, a varied 
society, the mixed town and county system of local govern- 
ment, a varied economic life, many religious sects. In short, 
it was a region mediating between New England and the South, 



28 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

and the East and the West. It represented that composite 
nationality which the contemporary United States exhibits, 
that juxtaposition of non-English groups, occupying a valley 
or a little settlement, and presenting reflections of the map of 
Europe in their variety. It was democratic and nonsectional, 
if not national; "easy, tolerant, and contented;" rooted 
strongly in material prosperity. It was typical of the modern 
United States. It was least sectional, not only because it lay 
between North and South, but also because with no barriers 
to shut out its frontiers from its settled region, and with a 
system of connecting waterways, the Middle region mediated 
between East and West as well as between North and South. 
Thus it became the typically American region. Even the New 
Englander, who was shut out from the frontier by the Middle 
region, tarrying in New York or Pennsylvania on his west- 
ward march, lost the acuteness of his sectionalism on the 
way.** 

The spread of cotton culture into the interior of the South 
finally broke down the contrast between the " tide-water " 
region and the rest of the State, and based Southern interests 
on slavery. Before this process revealed its results the west- 
ern portion of the South, which was akin to Pennsylvania in 
stock, society, and industry, showed tendencies to fall away 
from the faith of the fathers into internal improvement legisla- 
tion and nationalism. In the Virginia convention of 1829-30, 
called to revise the constitution, Mr. Leigh, of Chesterfield, 
one of the tide-water counties, declared: 

One of the miain causes of discontent which led 
to this convention, that which had the strongest 
influence in overcoming our veneration for the work 
of our fathers, which taught us to contemn the senti- 

** Author's article in The Mgis (Madison, Wis.), November 4, 1892. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 29 

ments of Henry and Mason and Pendleton, which 
weaned us from our reverence for the constituted 
authorities of the State, was an overweening pas- 
sion for internal improvement. I say this with 
perfect knowledge, for it has been avowed to me 
by gentlemen from the West over and over again. 
And let me tell the gentleman from Albemarle (Mr. 
Gordon) that it has been another principal object 
of those who set this ball of revolution in motion, 
to overturn the doctrine of State rights, of which 
Virginia has been the very pillar, and to remove the 
barrier she has interposed to the interference of the 
Federal Government in that same work of internal 
improvement, by so reorganizing the legislature 
that Virginia, too, may be hitched to the Federal 
car. 

It was this nationalizing tendency of the West that trans- 
formed the democracy of Jefferson into the national republic- 
anism of Mohroe and the democracy of Andrew Jackson. The 
West of the War of 1812, the West of Clay, and Benton and 
Harrison, and Andrew Jackson, shut off by the Middle States 
and the mountains from the coast sections, had a solidarity of 
its own with national tendencies.^^ On the tide of the Father 
of Waters, North and South met and mingled into a nation. 
Interstate migration went steadily on — a process of cross- 
fertilization of ideas and institutions. The fierce struggle of 
the sections over slavery on the western frontier does not dimin- 
ish the truth of this statement; it proves the truth of it. Slav- 
ery was a sectional trait that would not down, but in the West 
it could not remain sectional. It was the greatest of fron- 
tiersmen who declared: "I believe this Government can not 

*'^ Compare Roosevelt, " Thomas Benton," cli. i. 



30 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

endure permanently half slave and half free. It will become 
all of one thing or all of the other." Nothing works for nation- 
alism like intercourse within the nation. Mobility of popula- 
tion is death to localism, and the western frontier worked irre- 
sistibly in unsettling population. The effect reached back 
from the frontier and affected profoundly the Atlantic coast 
and even the Old World. 

But the most important effect of the frontier has been in the 
promotion of democracy here and in Europe. As has been 
indicated, the frontier is productive of individualism. Com- 
plex society is precipitated by the wilderness into a kind of 
primitive organization based on the family. The tendency is 
anti-social. It produces antipathy to control, and particularly 
to any direct control. The tax-gatherer is viewed as a repre- 
sentative of oppression. Prof. Osgood, in an able article,**^ 
has pointed out that the frontier conditions prevalent in the 
colonies are important factors in the explanation of the Amer- 
ican Revolution, where individual liberty was sometimes con- 
fused with absence of all effective government. The same 
conditions aid in explaining the difficulty of instituting a 
strong government in the period of the confederacy. The 
frontier individualism has from the beginning promoted 
democracy. 

The frontier States that came into the Union in the first 
quarter of a century of its existence came in with democratic 
suffrage provisions, and had reactive effects of the highest 
importance upon the older States whose peoples were beinp; 
attracted there. An extension of the franchise became essen- 
tial. It was western New York that forced an extension of 
suffrage in the constitutional convention of that State in 1821 ; 
and it was western Virginia that compelled the tide-water 

■^^ Political Science Quarterly, ii, p. 457. Compare Sumner, " Alex- 
ander Hamilton," chs. ii-vii. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER Bl 

region to put a more liberal suffrage provision in the constitu- 
tion framed in 1830, and to give to the frontier region a more 
nearly proportionate representation with the tide-water aris- 
tocracy. The rise of democracy as an effective force in the 
nation came in with western preponderance under Jackson and 
"William Henry Harrison, and it meant the triumph of the fron- 
tier — with all of its good and with all of its evil elements.*^ 
An interesting illustration of the tone of frontier democracy in 
1830 comes from the same debates in the Virginia convention 
already referred to. A representative from western Virginia 
declared : 

But, sir, it is not the increase of population in the 
West which this gentleman ought to fear. It is the 
energy which the mountain breeze and western 
habits impart to those emigrants. They are regen- 
erated, politically I mean, sir. They soon become 
working politicians ; and the difference, sir, between 
a talking and a ivorking politician is immense. The 
Old Dominion has long been celebrated for pro- 
ducing great orators; the ablest metaphysicians in 
policy; men that can split hairs in all abstruse 
questions of political economy. But at home, or 
when they return from Congress, they have negroes 
to fan them asleep. But a Pennsylvania, a New 
York, an Ohio, or a western Virginia statesman, 
though far inferior in logic, metaphysics, and 
rhetoric to an old Virginia statesman, has this 
advantage, that when he returns home he takes off 
his coat and takes hold of the plow. This gives 
him bone and muscle, sir, and preserves his repub- 
lican principles pure and uncontaminated. 

*^ Compare Wilson, " Division and Reunion," pp. 15, 24. 



32 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

So long as free land exists, the opportunity for a competency 
exists, and economic power secures political power. But the 
democracy born of free land, strong in selfishness and individu- 
alism, intolerant of administrative experience and education, 
and pressing individual liberty beyond its proper bounds, has 
its dangers as well as its benefits. Individualism in America 
has allowed a laxity in regard to governmental affairs which 
has rendered possible the spoils system and all the manifest 
evils that follow from the lack of a highly developed civic 
spirit. In this connection may be noted also the influence of 
frontier conditions in permitting lax business honor, inflated 
paper currency and wild-cat banking. The colonial and rev- 
olutionary frontier was the region whence emanated many of 
the worst forms of an evil currency.*^ The West in the War of 
1812 repeated the phenomenon on the frontier of that day, 
while the speculation and wild-cat banking of the period of the 
crisis of 1837 occurred on the new frontier belt of the next 
tier of States. Thus each one of the periods of lax financial 
integrity coincides with periods when a new set of frontier 
communities had arisen, and coincides in area with these suc- 
cessive frontiers, for the most part. The recent Populist 
agitation is a case in point. Many a State that now declines 
any connection with the tenets of the Populists, itself adhered 
to such ideas in an earlier stage of the development of the 
State. A primitive society can hardly be expected to show 
the intelligent appreciation of the complexity of business 
interests in a developed society. The continual recurrence of 
these areas of paper-money agitation is another evidence that 
the frontier can be isolated and studied as a factor in Amer- 
ican history of the highest importance.*^ 

*^ On the relation of frontier conditions to Revolutionary taxation, j 
see Sumner, Alexander Hamilton, ch. iii. 
** I have refrained from dwelling on the lawless characteristics of the 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 33 

The East has always feared the result of an unregulated 
advance of the frontier, and has tried to check and guide it. 
The English authorities would have checked settlement at 
the headwaters of the Atlantic tributaries and allowed the 
" savages to enjoy their deserts in quiet lest the peltry trade 
should decrease." This called out Burke's splendid protest: 

If you stopped your grants, what would be the 
consequence? The people would occupy without 
grants. They have already so occupied in many 
places. You can not station garrisons in every 
part of these deserts. If you drive the people from 
one place, they will carry on their annual tillage 
and remove with their flocks and herds to another. 
Many of the people in the back settlements are 
already little attached to particular situations. 
Already they have topped the Appalachian Moun- 
tains. From thence they behold before them an 
immense plain, one vast, rich, level meadow; a 
square of five hundred miles. Over this they 
would wander without a possibility of restraint; 
they would change their manners with their habits 
of life; would soon forget a government by which 
they were disowned; would become hordes of 
English Tartars; and, pouring down upon your 
unfortified frontiers a fierce and irresistible cav- 

frontier, because they are sufficiently well known. The gambler and des- 
perado, the regulators of the Carolinas and the vigilantes of California, 
are types of that line of scum that the waves of advancing civilization 
bore before them, and of the growth of spontaneous organs of authority 
where legal authority was absent. Compare Barrows, " United States of 
Yesterday and To-morrow"; Shinn, "Mining Camps"; and Bancroft, 
" Popular Tribunals." The humor, bravery, and rude strength, as well | 
as the vices of the frontier in its worst aspect, have left traces on Amer- i 1 
ican character, language, and literature, not soon to be effaced. I 



34 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

airy, become masters of your governors and your 
counselers, your collectors and comptrollers, and 
of all the slaves that adhered to them. Such would, 
and in no long time must, be the effect of attempt- 
ing to forbid as a crime and to suppress as an evil 
the command and blessing of Providence, " Increase 
and multiply." Such would be the happy result 
of an endeavor to keep as a lair of wild beasts that 
earth which God, by an express charter, has given 
to the children of men. 

But the English Government was not alone in its desire to 
limit the advance of the frontier and guide its destinies. Tide- 
water Virginia ^^ and South Carolina ^^ gerrymandered those 
colonies to insure the dominance of the coast in their legis- 
latures. Washington desired to settle a State at a time in the 
Northwest; Jefferson would reserve from settlement the terri- 
tory of his Louisiana Purchase north of the thirty-second par- 
allel, in order to offer it to the Indians in exchange for their 
settlements east of the Mississippi. " When we shall be full 
on this side," he writes, " we may lay off a range of States on 
the western bank from the head to the mouth, and so range 
after range, advancing compactly as we multiply." Madison 
went so far as to argue to the French minister that the United 
States had no interest in seeing population extend itself on 
the right bank of the Mississippi, but should rather fear it. 
When the Oregon question was under debate, in 1824, Smyth, 
of Virginia, would draw an unchangeable line for the limits of 
the United States at the outer limit of two tiers of States 
beyond the Mississippi, complaining that the seaboard States 
v/ere being drained of the flower of their population by the 

50 Debates in the Constitutional Convention, 1829-1830. 
^1 [McCrady] Eminent and Representative Men of the Carolinas, i, p. 
43; Calhoun's Works, i, pp. 401-406. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 35 

bringing of too much land into market. Even Thomas Benton, 
the man of widest views of the destiny of the West, at this 
stage of his career declared that along the ridge of the Rocky 
mountains "the western limits of the Republic should be 
drawn, and the statue of the fabled god Terminus should be 
raised upon its highest peak, never to be thrown down." ^^ 
But the attempts to limit the boundaries, to restrict land sales 
and settlement, and to deprive the West of its share of political 
power were all in vain. Steadily the frontier of settlement 
advanced and carried with it individualism, democracy, and 
nationalism, and powerfully affected the East and the Old 
World. 

The most effective efforts of the East to regulate the frontier 
came through its educational and religious activity, exerted by 
interstate migration and by organized societies. Speaking in 
1835, Dr. Lyman Beecher declared : " It is equally plain that 
the religious and political destiny of our nation is to be decided , 
in the West," and he pointed out that the population of the 
West " is assembled from all the States of the Union and 
from all the nations of Europe, and is rushing in like the waters 
of the flood, demanding for its moral preservation the imme- 
diate and universal action of those institutions which disci- 
pline the mind and arm the conscience and the heart. And so 
various are the opinions and habits, and so recent and imper- 
fect is the acquaintance, and so sparse are the settlements of 
the West, that no homogeneous public sentiment can be formed 
to legislate immediately into being the requisite institutions. 
And yet they are all needed immediately in their utmost per- 
fection and power. A nation is being ' born in a day.' . . . 
But what will become of the West if her prosperity rushes 
up to such a majesty of power, while those great institutions 
linger which are necessary to form the mind and the conscience 

52 Speech in the Senate, March 1, 1825; Register of Debates, i, 721. 



36 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

and the heart of that vast world. It must not be permitted. 
. . . Let no man at the East quiet himself and dream of lib- 
erty, whatever may become of the West. . . . Her destiny is 
our destiny." ^^ 

With the appeal to the conscience of New England, he adds 
appeals to her fears lest other religious sects anticipate her 
own. The New England preacher and school-teacher left their 
mark on the West. The dread of Western emancipation from 
New England's political and economic control was paralleled 
by her fears lest the West cut loose from her religion. Com- 
menting in 1850 on reports that settlement was rapidly extend- 
ing northward in Wisconsin, the editor of the Home Missionary 
writes: "We scarcely know whether to rejoice or mourn over 
this extension of our settlements. While we sympathize in 
whatever tends to increase the physical resources and pros- 
perity of our country, we can not forget that with all these 
dispersions into remote and still remoter corners of the land 
the supply of the means of grace is becoming relatively less 
and less." Acting in accordance with such ideas, home mis- 
sions were established and Western colleges were erected. 
As seaboard cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore 
strove for the mastery of Western trade, so the various denomi- 
r.a'ions strove for the possession of the West. Thus an intel- 
lectual stream from New England sources fertilized the West. 
Other sections sent their missionaries; but the real struggle 
was between sects. The contest for power and the expansive 
tendency furnished to the various sects by the existence of a 
moving frontier must have had important results on the char- 
acter of religious organization in the United States. The mul- 
tiplication of rival churches in the little frontier towns had 
deep and lasting social effects. The religious aspects of the 
frontier make a chapter in our history which needs study. 

"Plea for the West (Cincinnati, 1835), pp. 11 ff. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER 37 

From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits 
of profound importance. The works of travelers along each 
frontier from colonial days onward describe certain common 
traits, and these traits have, while softening down, still per- 
sisted as survivals in the place of their origin, even when a 
higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the 
frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics, p 
That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness andi 
wnquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick! 
to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things,* 
lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that 
restless, nervous energ)^ ^* that dominant individualism, work- 
ing for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuber- 
ance which comes with freedom — these are traits of the fron- 
tier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of 
the frontier. Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed 
into the waters of the New World, America has been another 
name for opportunity, and the people of the United States 
have taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has 
not only been open but has even been forced upon them. He 
would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive 
character of American life has now entirely ceased. Move- 
ment has been its dominant fact, and, unless this training has 
no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually 
demand a wider field for its exercise. But never again will 
such gifts of free land offer themselves. For a moment, at the 

5* Colonial travelers agree in remarking on the phlegmatic character- 
istics of the colonists. It has frequently been asked how such a people 
could have developed that strained nervous energy now characteristic of 
them. Compare Sumner, " Alexander Hamilton," p. 98, and Adams, 
"History of the United States," i, p. 60; ix, pp. 240, 241. The transition 
appears to become marked at the close of the War of 1812, a period when 
interest centered upon the development of the West, and the West was 
noted for restless energy. Grand, " Americans," ii, ch. i. 



38 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

frontier, the bonds of custom are broken and unrestraint is 

triumphant. There is not tabula rasa. The stubborn Ameri- 

\ can environment is there with its imperious summons to accept 

I its conditions; the inherited ways of doing things are also 

I there; and yet, in spite of environment, and in spite of custom, 

each frontier did indeed furnish a new field of opportunity, a 

gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and freshness, 

and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its 

i restraints and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons, have 

'accompanied the frontier. What the Mediterranean Sea was 

to the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new 

j experiences, calling out new institutions and activities, that, 

a and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United 

j States directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. 

And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the 

end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the fron- 

^ tier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of 

American history. 



II 

The First Official Frontier of the Massachusetts Bay ^ 

In the Significance of the " Frontier in American History," 
I took for my text the following announcement of the Super- 
intendent of the Census of 1890: 

Up to and including 1880 the country had a fron- 
tier of settlement but at present the unsettled area 
has been so broken into by isolated bodies of set- 
tlement that there can hardly be said to be a fron- 
tier line. In the discussion of its extent, the west- 
ward movement, etc., it cannot therefore any longer 
have a place in the census reports. 

Two centuries prior to this announcement, in 1690, a com- 
mittee of the General Court of Massachusetts recommended the 
Court to order what shall be the frontier and to maintain a 
committee to settle garrisons on the frontier with forty soldiers 
to each frontier town as a main guard. ^ In the two hundred 
years between this official attempt to locate the Massachusetts 
frontier line, and the official announcement of the ending of 
the national frontier line, westward expansion was the most 
important single process in American history. ^ 

The designation " frontier town " was not, however, a new 
one. As early as 1645 inhabitants of Concord, Sudbury, and 

1 Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, April, 1914, 
xvii, 250-271. Reprinted with permission of the Society. 

2 Massachusetts Archives, xxxvi, p. 150. 

39 



40 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Dedham, "being inland townes & but thinly peopled," were 
forbidden to remove without authority; ^ in 1669, certain towns 
had been the subject of legislation as " frontier towns;" * and 
in the period of King Philip's War there were various enact- 
ments regarding frontier towns.^ In the session of 1675-6 it 
had been proposed to build a fence of stockades or stone eight 
feet high from the Charles " where it is navigable " to the 
Concord at Billerica and thence to the Merrimac and down 
the river to the Bay, " by w^hich meanes that whole tract will 
[be] environed, for the security & safty (vnder God) of the 
people, their houses, goods & cattel; from the rage & fury of 
the enimy." ^ This project, however, of a kind of Roman 
Wall did not appeal to the frontiersmen of the time. It was 
a part of the antiquated ideas of defense which had been illus- 
trated by the impossible equipment of the heavily armored . 
soldier of the early Puritan regime whose corslets and head 
pieces, pikes, matchlocks, fourquettes and bandoleers, went 
out of use about the period of King Philip's War. The fifty- 
seven postures provided in the approved manual of arms for 
loading and firing the matchlock proved too great a handicap 
in the chase of the nimble savage. In this era the frontier 
fighter adapted himself to a more open order, and lighter 
equipment suggested by the Indian warrior's practice.^ 

The settler on the outskirts of Puritan civilization took up the 
task of bearing the brunt of attack and pushing forward the 
line of advance which year after year carried American settle- 

3 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii, p. 122. 

■* Ibid., vol. iv, pt. ii, p. 439 ; Massachusetts Archives, cvii, pp. 160-161. 

^ See, for example, Massachusetts Colony Records, v, 79 ; Green, " Gro- 
ton During the Indian Wars," p. 39; L. K. Mathews, " Expansion of New 
England," p. 58. 

^ Massachusetts Archives, Ixviii, pp. 174-176. 

7 Osgood, " American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, i, p. 501, 
and citations: of. Publications of this Society, xii, pp. 38-39. 



FRONTIER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY 41 

merits into the wilderness. In American thouglit and speech 
the term " frontier " has come to mean the edge of settlement, i^ 
rather than, as in Europe, the political boundary. By 1690 it 
was already evident that the frontier of settlement and the 
frontier of military defense were coinciding. As population 
advanced into the wilderness and thus successively brought 
new exposed areas between the settlements on the one side 
and the Indians with their European backers on the other, 
the military frontier ceased to be thought of as the Atlantic 
coast, but rather as a moving line bounding the un-won wilder- 
ness. It could not be a fortified boundary along the charter 
limits, for those limits extended to the South Sea, and con- 
flicted with the bounds of sister colonies. The thing to be 
defended was the outer edge of this expanding society, a chang- 
ing frontier, one that needed designation and re-statement with 
the changing location of the "West." 

It will help to illustrate the significance of this new frontier 
when we see that Virginia at about the same time as Massa- 
chusetts underwent a similar change and attempted to establish 
frontier towns, or " co-habitations," at the " heads," that is 
the first falls, the vicinity of Richmond, Petersburg, etc., of 
her rivers.^ 

The Virginia system of " particular plantations " introduced 
along the James at the close of the London Company's activ- 
ity had furnished a type for the New England town. In recom- 
pense, at this later day the New England town may have fur- 
nished a model for Virginia's efforts to create frontier settle- 
ments by legislation. 

8 Hening, " Statutes at Large," iii, p. 204: cf. 1 Massachusetts Historical 
Collections, v, p. 129, for influence of the example of the New England 
town. On Virginia frontier conditions see Alvord and Bidgood, " First 
Explorations of the Trans-Allegheny Region," pp. 23-34, 93-95. P. A. 
Bruce, " Institutional History of Virginia," ii, p. 97, discusses frontier 
defense in the seventeenth century. [See chapter iii, post.} 



42 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

An act of March 12, 1694'-5, by the General Court of Massa- 
chusetts enumerated the " Frontier Towns " which the inhab- 
itants were forbidden to desert on pain of loss of their lands 
(if landholders) or of imprisonment (if not landholders), 
unless permission to remove were first obtained.^ These 
eleven frontier towns included Wells, York, and Kittery on 
the eastern frontier, and y\mesbury, Haverhill, Dunstable, 
Chelmsford, Groton, Lancaster, Marlborough,^^ and Deerfield. 
In March, 1699-1700, the law was reenacted with the addi- 
tion of Brookfield, Mendon, and Woodstock, together with 
seven others, Salisbury, Andover,^^ Billerica, Hatfield, Hadley, 
Westfield, and Northampton, which, " tho' they be not frontiers 
as those towns first named, yet lye more open than many 
others to an attack of an Enemy." ^^ 

In the spring of 1704 the General Court of Connecticut, fol- 
lowing closely the act of Massachusetts, named as her frontier 

9 Massachusetts Archives, Ixx, 240 ; Massachusetts Province Laws, i, 
pp. 194, 293. 

10 In a petition (read March 3, 1692-3) of setders " in Sundry Farms 
granted in those Remote Lands Scituate and Lyeing between Sudbury, 
Concord, Marlbury, Natick and Sherburne & Westerly is the Wilder- 
ness," the petitioners ask easement of taxes and extension into the 
Natick region in order to have means to provide for the worship of God, 
and say: 

" Wee are not Ignorant that by reason of the present Distressed Condi- 
tion of those that dwell in these Frontier Towns, divers are meditating 
to remove themselves into such places where they have not hitherto been 
conserned in the present Warr and desolation thereby made, as also that 
thereby they may be freed from that great burthen of public taxes 
necessarily accruing thereby, Some haveing already removed themselves. 
Butt knowing for our parts that wee cannot run from the hand of a 
Jealous God, doe account it our duty to take such Measures as may 
inable us to the performance of that duty wee owe to God, the King, & 
our Familyes" (Massachusetts Archives, cxiii, p. 1). 

11 In a petition of 1658 Andover speaks of itself as " a remote upland 
plantation" (Massachusetts Archives, cxii, p. 99). 

1^ Massachusetts Province Laws, i, p. 402. 



FRONTIER OF THE MASSACHUSETIS BAY 43 

towns, not to be deserted, Symsbury, Waterbury, Danbury, 
Colchester, Windham, Mansfield, and Plainfield. 

Thus about the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of 
the eighteenth century there was an officially designated fron- 
tier line for New England. The line passing through these 
enumerated towns represents: (1) the outskirts of settlement 
along the eastern coast and up the Merrimac and its tribu- 
taries, — a region threatened from the Indian country by way 
of the Winnepesaukee Lake; (2) the end of the ribbon of 
settlement up the Connecticut Valley, menaced by the Canadian 
Indians by way of the Lake Champlain and Winooski River 
route to the Connecticut; (3) boundary towns which marked 
the edges of that inferior agricultural region, where the hard 
crystalline rocks furnished a later foundation for Shays' 
Rebellion, opposition to the adoption of the Federal Consti- 
tution, and the abandoned farm; and (4) the isolated intervale 
of Brookfield which lay intermediate between these frontiers. 

Besides this New England frontier there was a belt of set- 
tlement in New York, ascending the Hudson to where Albany 
and Schenectady served as outposts against the Five Nations, 
who menaced the Mohawk, and against the French and the 
Canadian Indians, who threatened the Hudson by way of Lake 
Champlain and Lake George.^^ The sinister relations of lead- 
ing citizens of Albany engaged in the fur trade with these 
Indians, even during time of war, tended to protect the Hud- 
son River frontier at the expense of the frontier towns of New 
England. 

The common sequence of frontier types (fur trader, cattle- 

13 Convenient maps of settlement, 1660-1700, are in E. Channing, 
" History of the United States," i, pp. 510-511, ii, end; Avery, " History of 
the United States and its People," ii, p. 398. A useful contemporaneous 
map for conditions at the close of King Philip's War is Hubbard's map of 
New England in his "Narrative" published in Boston, 1677. See also 
L. K. Mathews, "Expansion of New England," pp. 56-57, 70. 



44 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

raising pioneer, small primitive farmer, and the farmer engaged 
in intensive varied agriculture to produce a surplus for export) 
had appeared, though confusedly, in New England. The 
traders and their posts had prepared the way for the frontier 
towns,^* and the cattle industry was most important to the early 
farmers.^^ But the stages succeeded rapidly and intermingled. 
After King Philip's War, while Albany was still in the fur- 
trading stage, the New England frontier towns were rather 
like mark colonies, military-agricultural outposts against the 
Indian enemy. 

The story of the border warfare between Canada and the 
frontier towns furnishes ample material for studying frontier 
life and institutions; but I shall not attempt to deal with the 
narrative of the wars. The palisaded meeting-house square, 
the fortified isolated garrison houses, the massacres and cap- 
tivities are familiar features of New England's history. The 
Indian was a very real influence upon the mind and morals as 
well as upon the institutions of frontier New England. The 
occasional instances of Puritans returning from captivity to 
visit the frontier towns, Catholic in religion, painted and 
garbed as Indians and speaking the Indian tongue,^^ and the 
half-breed children of captive Puritan mothers, tell a sensa- 
tional part of the story; but in the normal, as well as in such 
exceptional relations of the frontier townsmen to the Indians, 

i** Weeden, " Economic and Social History of New England," pp. 90, 
95, 129-132; F. J. Turner, "Indian Trade in Wisconsin," p. 13; Mcll- 
wain, " Wraxall's Abridgement," introduction ; the town histories abound 
in evidence of the significance of the early Indian traders' posts, transi- 
tion to Indian land cessions, and then to town grants. 

^^ Weeden, loc. cit., pp. 64-67 ; M. Egleston, " New England Land Sys- 
tem," pp. 31-32 ; Sheldon, " Deerfield," i, pp. 37, 206, 267-268 ; Connecti- 
cut Colonial Records, vii, p. Ill, illustrations of cattle brands in 1727. 

1*5 Hutchinson, "History" (1795), ii, p. 129, note, relates such a case 
of a Groton man ; see also Parkman, " Half -Century," vol. i, cbu iv, citing 
Maurault, " Histoire des Abenakis," p. 377. 



FRONTIER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY 45 

there are clear evidences of the transforming influence of the 
Indian frontier upon the Puritan type of English colonist. 

In 1703-4, for example, the General Court of Massachusetts 
ordered five hundred pairs of snowshoes and an equal number 
of moccasins for use in specified counties " lying Frontier next 
to the Wilderness." ^^ Connecticut in 1704 after referring to 
her frontier towns and garrisons ordered that " said company 
of English and Indians shall, from time to time at the discre- 
tion of their chief comander, range the woods to indevour the 
discovery of an approaching enemy, and in especiall manner 
from Westfield to Ousatunnuck.^^ . . . And for the incourage- 
ment of our forces gone or going against the enemy, this 
Court will allow out of the publick treasurie the sume of five 
pounds for every mans scalp of the enemy killed in this Col- 
onic." ^^ Massachusetts offered bounties for scalps, varying 
in amount according to whether the scalp was of men, or 
women and youths, and whether it was taken by regular forces 
under pay, volunteers in service, or volunteers without pay.^^ 
One of the most striking phases of frontier adjustment, was 
the proposal of the Rev. Solomon Stoddard of Northampton 
in the fall of 1703, urging the use of dogs " to hunt Indians 
as they do Bears." The argument was that the dogs would 
catch many an Indian who would be too light of foot for 
the townsmen, nor was it to be thought of as inhuman; for the 
Indians " act like wolves and are to be dealt with as wolves." ^^ 
In fact Massachusetts passed an act in 1706 for the raising and 
increasing of dogs for the better security of the frontiers, and 

17 Massachusetts Archives, Ixxi, pp. 4, 84, 85, 87, 88. 
1^ Hoosatonic. 

19 Connecticut Records, iv, pp. 463, 464. 

20 Massachusetts Colony Records, v, p. 72 ; Massachusetts Province 
Laws, i, pp. 176, 211, 292, 558, 594, 600; Massachusetts Archives, Ixxi, 
pp. 7, 89, 102. Cf. Publications of this Society, vii, 275-278. 

21 Sheldon, " Deerfield," i, p. 290. 



46 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

both Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1708 paid money from 
their treasury for the trailing of dogs.^- 

Thus we come to familiar ground: the Massachusetts fron- 
tiersman like his western successor hated the Indians; the 
" tawney serpents," of Cotton Mather's phrase, were to be 
hunted down and scalped in accord with law and, in at least 
one instance by the chaplain himself, a Harvard graduate, the 
hero of the Ballad of Pigwacket, who 

many Indians slew. 
And some of them he scalp'd when bullets round him flew.^s 

Within the area bounded by the frontier line, were the 
broken fragments of Indians defeated in the era of King 
Philip's War, restrained within reservations, drunken and 
degenerate survivors, among whom the missionaries worked 
with small results, a vexation to the border towns,^'^ as they 
were in the case of later frontiers. Although, as has been said, 
the frontier towns had scattered garrison houses, and palisaded 
enclosures similar to the neighborhood forts, or stations, of 
Kentucky in the Revolution, and of Indiana and Illinois in the 
War of 1812, one difference is particularly noteworthy. In 
the case of frontiersmen who came down from Pennsylvania 
into the Upland South along the eastern edge of the Alleghanies, 
as well as in the more obvious case of the backwoodsmen of 
Kentucky and Tennessee, the frontier towns were too isolated 
from the main settled regions to allow much military protection 

22 Judd, " Hadley," p. 272 ; 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ii, p. 
235. 

23 Farmer and Moore, " Collections," iii, p. 64. Tlie frontier woman 
of the farther west found no more extreme representative than Hannah 
Dustan of Haverhill, with her trophy of ten scalps, for which she received 
a bounty of £50 (Parkman, " Frontenac," 1898, p. 407, note). 

2* For illustrations of resentment against those who protected the 
Christian Indians, see F. W. Gookin, " Daniel Gookin," pp. 145-155. 



FRONTIER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BA^ 47 

by the older areas. On the New England frontier, because it 
was adjacent to the coast towns, this was not the case, and here, 
as in seventeenth century Virginia, great activity in protecting 
the frontier was evinced by the colonial authorities, and the 
■frontier towns themselves called loudly for assistance. This 
phase of frontier defense needs a special study, but at present 
it is sufficient to recall that the colony sent garrisons to the 
frontier besides using the militia of the frontier towns; and 
that it employed rangers to patrol from garrison to garrison.^^ 

These were prototypes of the regular army post, and of rang- 
ers, dragoons, cavalry and mounted police who have carried 
the rem.oter military frontier forward. It is possible to trace 
this military cordon from New England to the Carolinas early 
in the eighteenth century, still neighboring the coast; by 1840 
it ran from Fort Snelling on the upper Mississippi through 
various posts to the Sabine boundary of Texas, and so it passed 
forward until to-day it lies at the edge of Mexico and the 
Pacific Ocean. 

A few examples of frontier appeals for garrison aid will 
help to an understanding of the early form of the military 
frontier. Wells asks, June 30, 1689: 

1 That yo'' Hon'"^ will please to send us speedily twen- 
ty Eight good brisk men that may be serviceable as 
a guard to us whilest we get in our Harvest of Hay 
& Corn, (we being unable to Defend ourselves & to 
Do our work), & also to Persue & destroy the 
Enemy as occasion may require 

2 That these men may be compleatly furnished with 

25 For example, Massachusetts Archives, Ixx, p. 261 ; Bailey, *' An- 
dover," p. 179 ; Metcalf , " Annals of Mendon," p, 63 ; Proceedings Massa- 
chusetts Historical Society, xliii, pp. 504-519. Parkman, " Frontenac " 
(Boston, 1896), p. 390, and "Half-Century of Conflict" (Boston, 1898), 
i, p. 55, sketches the frontier defense. 



48 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Arms, Amunition & Provision, and that upon the 
Countrys account, it being a Generall War.^® 

Dunstable, " still weak and unable both to keep our Gar- 
risons and to send out men to get hay for our Cattle; without 
doeing which wee cannot subsist," petitioned July 23, 1689, 
for twenty footmen for a month "to scout about the towne 
while wee get our hay." Otherwise, they say, they must be 
forced to leave.^^ Still more indicative of this temper is the 
petition of Lancaster, March 11, 1675-6, to the Governor and 
Council: "As God has made you father over us so you will 
have a father's pity to us." They asked a guard of men and 
aid, without which they must leave.-^ Deerfield pled in 1678 
to the General Court, " unlest you will be pleased to take us 
(out of your fatherlike pitty) and Cherish us in yo"" Bosomes 
we are like Suddainly to breathe out o*^ Last Breath." ^^ 

The perils of the time, the hardships of the frontier towns 
and readiness of this particular frontier to ask appropriations 
for losses and wounds,^*^ are abundantly illustrated in similar 
petitions from other towns. One is tempted at times to attrib- 
ute the very frank self-pity and dependent attitude to a min- 
ister's phrasing, and to the desire to secure remission of taxes, 
the latter a frontier trait more often associated with riot than 
with religion in other regions. 

As an example of various petitions the following from Gro- ! 
ton in 1704 is suggestive. Here the minister's hand is prob 
ably absent: 

1 That wharas by the all dessposing hand of god 
who orders all things in infinit wisdom it is our por- 

26 Massachusetts Archives, cvii, p. 155. 
27/6iU, cvii, p. 230; cf. 230 a. 

28 Massachusetts Archives, Ixviii, p. 156. 

29 Sheldon, "Deerfield, i, p. 189. 

30 Massachusetts Archives, Ixxi, 46-48, 131, 134, 135 et passim. 



FRONTIER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY 49 

tion to liue In such a part of the land which by 
reson of the enemy Is becom vary dangras as by 
wofuU experiants we haue fait both formarly and 
of late to our grat damidg & discoridgment and 
espashaly this last yere hauing lost so many par- 
sons som killed som captauated and som remoued 
and allso much corn & cattell and horses & hay 
wharby wee ar gratly Impouerrished and brought 
uary low & in a uary pore capasity to subsist any 
longer As the barers her of can inform your 
honors 

2 And more then all this our paster mr hobard 
is & hath been for aboue a yere uncapable of dess- 
pansing the ordinances of god amongst us & we 
haue advised with th Raurant Elders of our nay- 
boring churches and they aduise to hyare another 
minister and to saport mr hobard and to make our 
adras to your honours (we haue but litel laft to 
pay our deus with being so pore and few In numbr 
ather to town or cuntrey & we being a frantere 
town & lyable to danger there being no safty in 
going out nor coming in but for a long time we 
haue got our brad with the parel of our Hues & 
allso broght uery low by so grat a charg of bilding 
garisons & fortefycations by ordur of athorety & 
thar is saural of our Inhabitants ramoued out of 
town & others are prouiding to remoue, axcapt 
somthing be don for our Incoridgment for we are 
so few & so por that we canot pay two ministers 
nathar ar we wiling to liue without any we spand 
so much time in waching and warding that we can 
doe but litel els & truly we haue lined allmost 2 
yers more like soulders then other wise & accapt 



50 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

your honars can find out some bater way for our 
safty and support we cannot uphold as a town ather 
by remitting our tax or tow alow pay for building 
the sauarall forts alowed and ordred by athority 
or alls to alow the one half of our own Inhabitants 
to be under pay or to grant liberty for our remufe 
Into our naiburing towns to tak cer for oursa^fs 
all which if your honors shall se meet to grant 
you will hereby gratly incoridg your humble pate- 
ceners to conflect with th many trubls we are ensa- 
dant unto.^^ 

Forced together into houses for protection, getting in their 
crops at the peril of their lives, the frontier townsmen felt 
it a hardship to contribute also to the taxes of the province. 

31 Massachusetts Archives, Ixxi, p. 107 : of. Metcalf, " Mendon," p. 130 ; 
Sheldon, " Deerfield," i, p. 288. The frontier of Virginia in 1755 and 
1774 showed similar conditions: see, for example, the citations to Wash- 
ington's Writings in Thwaites, "France in America," pp. 193-195; and 
frontier letters in Thwaites and Kellogg, " Dunmore's War," pp. 227, 
228 et passim. The following petition to Governor Gooch of Virginia, 
dated July 30, 1742, affords a basis for comparison with a Scotch-Irish 
frontier : 

We your pettionours humbly sheweth that we your Honours Loly and 
Dutifull Subganckes hath ventred our Lives & all that we have In settling 
ye back parts of Virginia which was a veri Great Hassirt & Dengrous, 
for it is the Hathins [heathens] Road to ware, which has proved hortfull 
to severil of ous that were ye first settlers of these back woods & wee 
your Honibill pettionors some time a goo petitioned your Honnour for to 
have Commisioned men amungst ous which we your Honnours most 
DuttifuU subjects thought properist men & men that had Hart and 
Curidg to bed us yn time of [war] & to defend your Contray & your 
poor Sogbacks Intrist from ye voilince of ye Haithen — But yet agine 
we Humbly persume to poot your Honnour yn mind of our Great want 
of them in hopes that your Honner will Grant a Captins' Commission to 
John McDowell, with follring ofishers, and your Honnours' Complyence 
in this will be Great settisfiction to your most DuttifuU and Humbil 
pettioners — and we as in Duty bond shall Ever pray . . . (Calendar of 
Virginia State Papers, i, p. 235). 



FRONTIER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY 51 

while they helped to protect the exposed frontier. In addition 
there were grievances of absentee proprietors who paid no 
town taxes and yet profited by the exertions of the frontiers- 
men; of that I shall speak later. 

If we were to trust to these petitions asking favors from the 
government of the colony, we might impute to these early fron- 
tiersmen a degree of submission to authority unlike that of 
other frontiersmen,^^ and indeed not wholly warranted by the 
facts. Reading carefully, we find that, however prudently 
phrased, the petitions are in fact complaints against taxation; 
demands for expenditures by the colony in their behalf; criti- 
cisms of absentee proprietors; intimations that they may be 
forced to abandon the frontier position so essential to the 
defense of the settled eastern country. 

The spirit of military insubordination characteristic of the 
frontier is evident in the accounts of these towns, such as 
Pynchon's in 1694, complaining of the decay of the fortifica- 
tions at Hatfield, Hadley, and Springfield: " the people a little 
wilful. Inclined to doe when and how they please or not at 
all." ^^ Saltonstall writes from Haverhill about the same time 
regarding his ill success in recruiting: " I will never plead for 
an Haverhill man more," and he begs that some meet person 
be sent " to tell us what we should, may or must do. I have 
laboured in vain: some go this, and that, and the other way at 
pleasure, and do what they list." ^'^ This has a familiar ring 
to the student of the frontier. 

As in the case of the later frontier also, the existence of a 

32 But there is a note of deference in Southern frontier petitions to the 
Continental Congress — to be discounted, however, by the remoteness of 
that body. See F. J. Turner, " Western State-Making in the Revolution- 
ary Era " (American Historical Review, i, pp. 70, 251). The demand for 
remission of taxes is a common feature of the petitions there quoted. 

2s Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xliii, pp. 506 ff. 

34/6rJ., xliii, p. 518. 



52 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

common danger on the borders of settlement tended to con- 
solidate not only the towns of Massachusetts into united action 
for defense, but also the various colonies. The frontier was 
an incentive to sectional combination then as it was to national- 
ism afterward. When in 1692 Connecticut sent soldiers from 
her own colony to aid the Massachusetts towns on the Connec- 
ticut River,^^ she shov/ed a realization that the Deerfield peo- 
ple, who were " in a sense in the enemy's Mouth almost," as 
Pynchon wrote, constituted her own frontier ^^ and that the 
facts of geography were more compelling than arbitrary colo- 
nial boundaries. Thereby she also took a step that helped to 
break down provincial antagonisms. When in 1689 Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut sent agents to Albany to join with 
New York in making presents to the Indians of that colony 
in order to engage their aid against the French,^^ they recog- 
nized (as their leaders put it) that Albany was "the hinge" 
of the frontier in this exposed quarter. In thanking Connec« 
ticut for the assistance furnished in 1690 Livingston said: 
" I hope your honors do not look upon Albany as Albany, 
but as the frontier of your honor's Colony and of all their 
Majesties countries." ^^ 

The very essence of the American frontier is that it is the 
graphic line which records the expansive energies of the people 
behind it, and which by the law of its own being continually 
draws that advance after it to new conquests. This is one 
of the most significant things about New England's frontier 
in these years. That long blood-stained line of the eastern 
frontier which skirted the Maine coast was of great impor- 
ts Connecticut Colonial Records, iv, p. 67. 

36 In a petition of February 22, 1693-4, Deerfield calls itself the 
" most Utmost Frontere Town in the County of West Hampshire " 
(Massachusetts Archives, cxiii, p. 57 a). 

37 Judd, " Hadley," p. 249. 

38 W. D. Schuyler-Lighthall, " Glorious Enterprise," p. 16. 



FRONTIER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BA^ 53 

tance, for it imparted a western tone to the life and character- 
istics of the Maine people which endures to this day, and it 
was one line of advance for New England toward the mouth 
of the St. Lawrence, leading again and again to diplomatic 
negotiations with the powers that held that river. The line 
of the towns that occupied the waters of the Merrimac, tempted 
the province continually into the wilderness of New Hamp- 
shire. The Connecticut river towns pressed steadily up that 
stream, along its tributaries into the Hoosatonic valleys, and 
into the valleys between the Green Mountains of Vermont. 
By the end of 1723, the General Court of Massachusetts 
enacted, — 

That It will be of Great Service to all the Western 
Frontiers, both in this and the Neighboring Gov- 
ernment of Conn., to Build a Block House above 
Northfield, in the most convenient Place on the 
Lands called the Equivilant Lands, & to post in it 
forty Able Men, English & Western Indians, to be 
employed in Scouting at a Good Distance up Conn. 
River, West River, Otter Creek, and sometimes 
Eastwardly above the Great Manadnuck, for the 
Discovery of the Enemy Coming towards anny of 
the frontier Towns." ^® 

The " frontier Towns " were preparing to swarm. It was not 
long before Fort Dummer replaced " the Block House," and 
the Berkshires and Vermont became new frontiers. 

The Hudson River likewise was recognized as another line 
of advance pointing the way to Lake Champlain and Mon- 
treal, calling out demands that protection should be secured 
by means of an aggressive advance of the frontier. Cc^nada 

89 Sheldon, " Deerfield," i, p. 405. 



54 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

delenda est became tlie rallying cry in New England as well 
as in New York, and combined diplomatic pressure and mili- 
tary expeditions followed in the French and Indian wars and 
in the Revolution, in which the children of the Connecticut 
and Massachusetts frontier towns, acclimated to Indian fight- 
ing, followed Ethan Allen and his fellows to the north.*^ 
/ Having touched upon some of the military and expansive 
tendencies of this first official frontier, let us next turn to its 
social, economic, and political aspects. How far was this first 
frontier a field for the investment of eastern capital and for 
political control by it? Were there evidences of antagonism 
between the frontier and the settled, property-holding classes 
of the coast? Restless democracy, resentfulness over taxa- 
tion and control, and recriminations between the Western pion- 
eer and the Eastern capitalist, have been characteristic features 
of other frontiers: were similar phenomena in evidence here? 
Did " Populistic " tendencies appear in this frontier, and were 
there grievances which explained these tendencies? *' 

In such colonies as New York and Virginia the land grants 
were often made to memxbers of the Council and their influential 
friends, even when there were actual settlers already on the 
grants. In the case of New England the land system is usually 
so described as to give the impression that it was based on a 

'*o " I want to have your warriours come and see me," wrote Allen to 
the Indians of Canada in 1775, " and help me fight the King's Regular 
Troops. You know they stand all close together, rank and file, and my 
men fight so as Indians do, and I want your warriours to join with me 
and my warriours, like brothers, and ambush the Regulars: if you will, 
I will give you money, blankets, tomahawks, knives, paint, and any thing 
that there is in the army, just like brothers; and I will go with you into 
the woods to scout; and my men and your men will sleep together, and 
eat and drink together, and fight Regulars, because they first killed our 
brothers" (American Archives, 4th Series, ii, p. 714). 

*i Compare A. McF. Davis, " The Shays Rebellion a Political After- 
math " (Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, xxi, pp. 58, 62, 75-79) . 



FRONTIER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY 55 

non-commercial policy, creating new Puritan towns by free 
grants of land made in advance to approved settlers. This 
description does not completely fit the case. That there was 
an economic interest on the part of absentee proprietors, and 
that men of political influence with the government were often 
among the grantees seems also to be true. Melville Egleston 
states the case thus : " The court was careful not to authorize 
new plantations unless they were to be in a measure under the 
influence of men in whom confidence could be placed, and 
commonly acted upon their application." *^ The frontier, as 
we shall observe later, was not always disposed to see the 
practice in so favorable a light. 

New towns seem to have been the result in some cases of the 
aggregation of settlers upon and about a large private grant; 
more often they resulted from settlers in older towns, where 
the town limits were extensive, spreading out to the good lands 
of the outskirts, beyond easy access to the meeting-house, and 
then asking recognition as a separate town. In some cases 
they may have been due to squatting on unassigned lands, or 
purchasing the Indian title and then asking confirmation. In 
others grants were made in advance of settlement. 

As early as 1636 the General Court had ordered that none 
go to new plantations without leave of a majority of the 
magistrates.^^ This made the legal situation clear, but it 
would be dangerous to conclude that it represented the actual 
situation. In any case there would be a necessity for the 
settlers finally to secure the assent of the Court. This could 
be facilitated by a grant to leading men having political influ- 
ence with the magistrates. The complaints of absentee pro- 
prietors which find expression in the frontier petitions of the 
seventeenth and early eighteenth century seems to indicate that 

*2 " Land System of the New England Colonies," p. 30. 
*3 Massachusetts Colony Records, i, p. 167. 



56 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

this happened. In the succeeding years of the eighteenth cen- 
tury the grants to leading men and the economic and political 
motives in the grants are increasingly evident. This whole 
topic should be made the subject of special study. What is 
here offered is merely suggestive of a problem.** 
^^ The frontier settlers criticized the absentee proprietors, who 
profited by the pioneers' expenditure of labor and blood upon 
their farms, while they themselves enjoyed security in an east- 
em town. A few examples from town historians will illus- 
trate this. Among the towns of the Merrimac Valley, Salis- 
bury was planted on the basis of a grant to a dozen proprietors 
including such men as Mr. Bradstreet and the younger Dudley, 
only two of whom actually lived and died in Salisbury.*^ 
Amesbury was set off from Salisbury by division, one half of 
the signers of the agreement signing by mark. Haverhill was 
first seated in 1641, following petitions from Mr. Ward, the 
Ipswich minister, his son-in-law, Giles Firmin, and others. 
Firmin's letter to Governor Winthrop, in 1640, complains that 
Ipswich had given him his ground in that town on condi- 
tion that he should stay in the town three years or else he 
could not sell it, "whenas others have no business but 
range from place to place on purpose to live upon the coun- 
trey." *« 

Dunstable's large grant was brought about by a combination 
of leading men who had received grants after the survey of 
1652; among such grants was one to the Ancient and Honor- 
able Artillery Company and another to Thomas Brattle of 
Boston. Apparently it was settled chiefly by others than the 

** Compare Weeden, " Economic and Social History of New England," 
i, pp. 270-271; Gookin, "Daniel Gookin," pp. 106-161; and the his- 
tories of Worcester for illustrations of how the various factors noted 
could be combined in a single town. 

45 F. Merrill, " Amesbury," pp. 5, 50. 

46 B. L. Mirick, " Haverhill," pp. 9, 10. 



FRONTIER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY 57 

original grantees.*^ Groton voted in 1685 to sue the "non- 
Residenc " to assist in paying the rate, and in 1679 the Gen- 
eral Court had ordered non-residents having land at Groton 
to pay rates for their lands as residents did.*^ Lancaster 
(Nashaway) was granted to proprietors including various 
craftsmen in iron, indicating, perhaps, an expectation of iron 
works, and few of the original proprietors actually settled in 
the town.^^ The grant of 1653-4 was made by the Court after 
reciting: (1) that it had ordered in 1647 that the "ordering 
and disposeing of the Plantation at Nashaway is wholly in the 
Courts power"; (2) "Considering that there is allredy at 
Nashaway about nine Families and that severall both free- 
men and others intend to goe and setle there, some whereof 
are named in this Petition," etc. 

Mendon, begun in 1660 by Braintree people, is a particularly 
significant example. In 1681 the inhabitants petitioned that 
while they are not " of the number of those who dwell in their 
ceiled houses & yet say the time is not come that the Lord's 
house should, be built," yet they have gone outside of their 
strength "unless others who are proprietors as well as our- 
selves, (the price of whose lands is much raysed by our carry- 
ing on public work & will be nothing worth if we are forced 
to quit the place) doo beare an equal share in Town charges 
with us. Those who are not yet come up to us are a great and 
far yet abler part of our Proprietors . . ." ^^ In 1684 the 
selectmen inform the General Court that one half of the pro- 
prietors, two only excepted, are dwelling in other places, " Our 
proprietors, abroad," say they, " object that they see no reason 
why they should pay as much for thayer lands as we do for 

47 Green, " Early Records of Groton," pp. 49, 70, 90. 

48 Ibid. 

*9 Worcester County History, i, pp. 2, 3. 

50 J. G. Metcalf, " Annals of Mendon," p. 85. 



58 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

our Land and stock, which we answer that if their be not a 
noff of reason for it, we are sure there is more than enough 
of necessity to supply that is wanting in reason." ^^ This is 
the authentic voice of the frontier. 

Deerfield furnishes another type, inasmuch as a considerable 
part of its land was first held by Dedham, to which the grant 
was made as a recompense for the location of the Natick 
Indian reservation. Dedham shares in the town often fell into 
the hands of speculators, and Sheldon, the careful historian of 
Deerfield, declares that not a single Dedham man became a 
permanent resident of the grant. In 1678 Deerfield petitioned 
the General Court as follows: 

You may be pleased to know that the very prin- 
ciple & best of the land; the best for soile; the best 
for situation; as lying in y® centre & midle of the 
town: & as to quantity, nere half, belongs unto 
eight or 9 proprietors each and every of which, are 
never like to come to a settlement amongst us, 
which we have formerly found grievous & doe 
Judge for the future will be found intollerable if 
not altered. O'" minister, Mr. Mather ... & we 
ourselves are much discouraged as judging the 
Plantation will be spoiled if thes proprietors may 
not be begged, or will not be bought up on very 
easy terms outt of their Right . . . Butt as long as 
the maine of the plantation Lies in men's hands that 
can't improve it themselves, neither are ever like to 

^1 P. 96. Compare the Kentucky petition of 1780 given in Roosevelt, 
*' Winning of the "West," ii, p. 398, and the letter from that frontier cited 
in Turner, " Western State-Making " {American Historical Review, i, p. 
262), attacking the Virginia "Nabobs," who hold absentee land titles. 
" Let the great men" say they, " whom the land belongs to come and 
defend it." 



FRONTIER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY 59 

putt such tenants on to it as shall be likely to 
advance the good of y" place in Civill or sacred 
Respects; he, ourselves, and all others that think 
of going to it, are much discouraged.^^ 

Woodstock, later a Connecticut town, was settled under a 
grant in the Nipmuc country made to the town of Roxbury. 
The settlers, who located their farms near the trading post 
about which the Indians still collected, were called the 
" go-ers," while the " stayers " were those who remained in 
Roxbury, and retained half of the new grant; but it should 
be added that they paid the go-ers a sum of money to facilitate 
the settlement. 

This absentee proprietorship and the commercial attitude 
toward the lands of new towns became more evident in suc- 
ceeding years of the eighteenth century. Leicester, for exam- 
ple, was confirmed by the General Court in 1713. The twenty 
shares were divided among twenty-two proprietors, including 
Jeremiah Dummer, Paul Dudley (Attorney-General), William 
Dudley (like Paul a son of the Governor, Joseph Dudley), 
Thomas Hutchinson (father of the later Governor), John 
Clark (the political leader), and Samuel Sewall (son of the 
Chief Justice). These were all men of influence, and none of 
the proprietors became inhabitants of Leicester. The pro- 
prietors tried to induce the fifty families, whose settlement 
was one of the conditions on which the grant was made, to 
occupy the eastern half of the township reserving the rest as 
their absolute property.^^ 

The author of a currency tract, in 1716, entitled " Some Con- 

5-J Sheldon, " Deerfield," i, pp. 188-189. 

53 These facts are stated on the authority of E. Washburn, " Leicester," 
pp. S-15: compare Major Stephen Sewall to Jeremiah Dummer, 1717, 
quoted in Weeden, " Economic and Social History of New England," 
ii, p. 505, note 4. 



60 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

siderations upon the Several Sorts of Banks," remarks that for- 
merly, when land was easy to be obtained, good men came 
over as indentured servants; but now, he says, they are run- 
aways, thieves, and disorderly persons. The remedy for this, 
in his opinion, would be to induce servants to come over by 
offering them homes when the terms of indenture should 
expire."^* He therefore advocates that townships should be 
laid out four or five miles square in which grants of fifty or 
sixty acres could be made to servants.^^ Concern over the 
increase of negro slaves in Massachusetts seems to have been 
the reason for this proposal. It indicates that the current 
practice in disposing of the lands did not provide for the poorer 
people. 

But Massachusetts did not follow this suggestion of a home- 
stead policy. On the contrary, the desire to locate towns to 
create continuous lines of settlement along the roads between 
the disconnected frontiers and to protect boundary claims by 
granting tiers of towns in the disputed tract, as well, no doubt, 
as pressure from financial interests, led the General Court 
between 1715 and 1762 to dispose of the remaining public 
domain of Massachusetts under conditions that made specu- 
lation and colonization by capitalists important faclors.^^ 
When in 1762 Massachusetts sold a group of townships in the 
Berkshires to the highest bidders (by whole townships), ^^ the 
transfer from the social-religious to the economic conception 

^5* Compare the Virginia system, Bruce, " Economic History of Vir- 
ginia in the Seventeenth Century," ii, pp. 42, 43. 

55 For this item I am indebted to our associate, Mr. Andrew McF. 
Davis: see his " Colonial Currency Reprints," i, pp. 335-349. 

5« Hutchinson, " History of Massachusetts " (1768) , ii, pp. 331, 332, has 
an instructive comment. A. C. Ford, " Colonial Precedents of Our Na- 
tional Land Svstem," p. 84 ; L. K. Mathews, " Expansion of New Eng- 
land," pp. 82 ff . 

57 J. G. Holland, " Western Massachusetts." p. 197. 



FRONTIER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY 61 

was complete, and the frontier was deeply influenced by the 
change to " land mongering." 

In one respect, however, there was an increasing recognition 
of the religious and social element in settling the frontier, due 
in part, no doubt, to a desire to provide for the preservation of 
eastern ideals and influences in the West. Provisions for 
reserving lands within the granted' townships for the support 
of an approved minister, and for schools, appear in the seven- 
teenth century and become a common feature of the grants for 
frontier towns in the eighteenth.^^ This practice with respect 
to the New England frontier became the foundation for the 
system of grants of land from the public domain for the sup- 
port of common schools and state universities by the federal 
government from its beginning, and has been profoundly influ- 
ential in later Western States. 

Another ground for discontent over land questions was fur- 
nished by the system of granting lands within the town by 
the commoners. The principle which in many, if not all, 
cases guided the proprietors in distributing the town lots is 
familiar and is well stated in the Lancaster town records 
(1653): 

And, whereas Lotts are Now Laid out for the 
most part Equally to Rich and poore, Partly to 
keepe the Towne from Scatering to farr, and partly 
out of Charitie and Respect to men of meaner 
estate, yet that Equallitie (which is the rule of 
God) may be observed, we Covenant and Agree, 
That in a second Devition and so through all other 
Devitions of Land the mater shall be drawne as 
neere to equallitie according to mens estates as wee 

5^ Jos. Schafer, " Origin of the System of Land Grants for Education," 
pp. 25-33. 



62 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

are able to doe, That he which hath now more 
then his estate Deserveth in home Lotts and enter- 
vale Lotts shall haue so much Less: and he that 
hath Less then his estate Deserveth shall haue so 
much more.^* 

This peculiar doctrine of " equality " had early in the his- 
tory of the colony created discontents. Winthrop explained 
the principle which governed himself and his colleagues in 
the case of the Boston committee of 1634 by saying that their 
divisions were arranged " partly to prevent the neglect of 
trades." This is a pregnant idea; it underlay much of the 
later opposition of New England as a manufacturing section 
to the free homestead or cheap land policy, demanded by the 
West and by the labor party, in the national public domain. 
The migration of labor to free lands meant that higher wages 
must be paid to those who remained. The use of the town 
lands by the established classes to promote an approved form 
of society naturally must have had some effect on migration. 

But a more efifective source of disputes was with respect to 
the relation of the town proprietors to the public domain of 
the town in contrast with the non-proprietors as a class. The 
need of keeping the town meeting and the proprietors' meeting 
separate in the old towns in earlier years was not so great 
as it was when the new-domers became numerous. In an 
increasing degree these new-comers were either not granted 
lands at all, or were not admitted to the body of proprietors 
with rights in the possession of the undivided town lands. 
Contentions on the part of the town meeting that it had the 
right of dealing with the town lands occasionally appear, signif- 
icantly, in the frontier towns of Haverhill, Massachusetts, 

59 H. D. Hurd (ed.), " History of Worcester County," i, p. 6. The ital- 
ics are mine. 



FRONTIER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY 63 

Simsbury, Connecticut, and in the towns of the Connecticut 
Valley.^*^ Jonathan Edwards, in 1751, declared that there had 
been in Northampton for forty or fifty years " two parties 
somewhat like the court and country parties of England. . . . 
The first party embraced the great proprietors of land, and 
the parties concerned about land and other matters." ^^ The 
tendency to divide up the common lands among the proprietors 
in individual possession did not become marked until the 
eighteenth century; but the exclusion of some from possession 
of the town lands and the " equality " in allotment favoring 
men with already large estates must have attracted ambitious 
men who were not of the favored class to join in the move- 
ment to new towns. Religious dissensions would combine to 
make frontier society as it formed early in the eighteenth cen- 
tury more and more democratic, dissatisfied with the existing 
order, and less respectful of authority. We shall not under- 
stand the relative radicalism of parts of the Berkshires, Ver- 
mont and interior New Hampshire without enquiry into the 
degree in which the control over the lands by a proprietary 
monopoly affected the men who settled on the frontier. 

The final aspect of this frontier to be examined, is the atti- 
tude of the conservatives of the older sections towards this 
movement of westward advance. President Dwight in the era 
of the War of 1812 was very critical of the " foresters," but 
saw in such a movement a safety valve to the institutions of 
New England by allowing the escape of the explosive advo- 
cates of " Innovation." ^- 

Cotton Mather is perhaps not a typical representative of the 
conservative sentiment at the close of the seventeenth century, 
but his writings may partly reflect the attitude of Boston Bay 

60 Egleston, " Land System of the New England Colonies," pp. 39-41. 

«i Ibid., p. 41. 

«2T. Dwight, "Travels" (1821), ii, pp. 459^63. 



64 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

toward New England's first Western frontier. Writing in 1694 
of " Wonderful Passages which have Occurred, First in the Pro- 
tections and then in the Afflictions of New England," he says: 

One while the Enclosing of Commons hath made 
Neighbours, that should have been like Sheep, to 
Bite and devour one another. . . . Again, Do our 
Old People, any of them Go Out from the Institu- 
tions of God, Swarming into New Settlements, 
where they and their Untaught Families are like to 
Perish for Lack of Vision? They that have done 
so, heretofore, have to their Cost found, that they 
were got unto the Wrong side of the Hedge, in 
their doing so. Think, here Should this be done 
any more? We read of Balaam, in Num. 22, 23. 
He was to his Damage, driven to the Wall, when he 
would needs make an unlawful Salley forth after 
the Gain of this World. . . . WTiy, when men, for 
the Sake of Earthly Gain, would be going out into 
the Warm Sun, they drive Through the Wall, and 
the Angel of the Lord becomes their Enemy. 

In his essay on "Frontiers Well-Defended " (1707) Mather 
assures the pioneers that they " dwell in a Hatsarmaneth," a 
place of " tawney serpents," are " inhabitants of the Valley of 
Achor," and are " the Poor of this World." There may be sig- 
nificance in his assertion : " It is remarkable to see that when 
the Unchurched Villages, have been so many of them, utterly 
broken up, in the War, that has been upon us, those that have 
had Churches regularly formed in them, have generally been 
under a more sensible Protection of Heaven." " Sirs," he says, 
" a Church-State well f orm'd may fortify you wonderfully ! " 
He recommends abstention from profane swearing, furious 



FRONTIER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY 65 

cursing, Sabbath breaking, unchastity, dishonesty, robbing of 
God by defrauding the ministers of their dues, drunkenness, 
and revels and he reminds them that even the Indians have 
family prayers! Like his successors who solicited missionary 
contributions for the salvation of the frontier in the Mississippi 
Valley during ^he forties of the nineteenth century, this early 
spokesman for New England laid stress upon teaching anti- 
popery, particularly in view of the captivity that might await 
them. 

In summing up, we find many of the traits of later frontiers 
in this early prototype, the Massachusetts frontier. It lies at 
the edge of the Indian country and tends to advance. It calls 
out militant qualities and reveals the imprint of wilderness 
conditions upon the psychology and m.orals as well as upon the 
iiistitutions of the people. It demands common defense and 
thus becomes a factor for consolidation.' It is built on the 
basis of a preliminary fur trade, and is settled by the combined 
and sometimes antagonistic forces of eastern men of property 
(the absentee proprietors) and the democratic pioneers. The 
East attempted to regulate and control it. Individualistic and 
democratic tendencies were emphasized both by the wilder- 
ness conditions and, probably, by the prior contentions between 
the proprietors and non-proprietors of the towns from which 
settlers moved to the frontier. Removal away from the con- 
trol of the custom.ary usages of the older communities and 
from the conservative influence of the body of the clergy, 
increased the innovating tendency. Finally the towns were 
regarded by at least one prominent representative of the estab- 
lished order in the East, as an undesirable place for the re-loca- 
tion of the pillars of society. The temptation to look upon 
the frontier as a field for investment was viewed by the clergy 
as a danger to the " institutions of God." The frontier was 
'*the Wrong side of the Hedge." 



66 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

But to this "wrong side of the hedge" New England men 
continued to migrate. The frontier towns of 1695 were hardly 
more than suburbs of Boston. The frontier of a century later 
included New England's colonies in Vermont, Western New 
York, the Wyoming Valley, the Connecticut Reserve, and the 
Ohio Company's settlement in the Old Nortliwest Territory. 
By the time of the Civil War the frontier towns of New Eng- 
land had occupied the great prairie zone of the Middle West 
and were even planted in Mormon Utah and in parts of the 
Pacific Coast. New England's sons had become the organizers 
of a Greater New England in the West, captains of industry, 
political leaders, founders of educational systems, and 
prophets of religion, in a section that was to influence the 
ideals and shape the destiny of the nation in ways to which the 
eyes of men like Cotton Mather were sealed.*^^ 

®3 [See F. J. Turner, " Greater New England in the Middle of the 
Nineteenth Century,' in American Antiquarian Society " Proceedings," 
1920.] 



Ill 

The Old West^ 

It is not the oldest West with which this chapter deals. The 
oldest West was the Atlantic coast. Roughly speaking, it took 
a century of Indian fighting and forest felling for the colonial 
settlements to expand into the interior to a distance of about 
a hundred miles from the coast. Indeed, some stretches were 
hardly touched in that period. This conquest of the nearest 
wilderness in the course of the seventeenth century and in the 
early years of the eighteenth, gave control of the maritime sec- 
tion of the nation and made way for the new movement of west- 
ward expansion which I propose to discuss. 

In his " Winning of the West,' ' Roosevelt dealt chiefly with 
the region beyond the Alleghanies, and with the period of the 
later eighteenth century, although he prefaced his account 
with an excellent chapter describing the backwoodsmen of the 
Alleghanies and their social conditions from 1769 to 1774. 
It is important to notice, however, that he is concerned with a 
backwoods society already formed; that he ignores the New 
England frontier and its part in the winning of the West, and 
does not recognize tliat there was a West to be won between 
New England and the Great Lakes. In short, he is interested 
in the winning of the West beyond the Alleghanies by the 
southern half of the frontier folk. 

1 Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for 1908. 
Reprmted with the permission of the Society. 

67 



68 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

There is, then, a western area intermediate between the 
coastal colonial settlements of the seventeenth century and the 
trans-Alleghany settlements of the latter portion of the eigh- 
teenth century. This section I propose to isolate and discuss 
under the name of the Old West, and in the period from 
about 1676 to 1763. It includes the back country of New 
England, the Mohawk Valley, the Great Valley of Pennsyl- 
vania, the Shenandoah Valley, and the Piedmont — that is, 
the interior or upland portion of the South, lying between the 
Alleghanies and the head of navigation of the Atlantic rivers 
marked by the " fall line." - 

In this region, and in these years, are to be found the begin- 
nings of much that is characteristic in Western society, for the 
Atlantic coast was in such close touch with Europe that its 
frontier experience was soon counteracted, and it developed 
along other lines. It is unfortunate that the colonial back 
country appealed so long to historians solely in connection 
with the colonial wars, for the development of its society, its 
institutions and mental attitude all need study. Its history 
has been dealt with in separate fragments, by states, or towns, 
or in discussions of special phases, such as German and Scotch- 
Irish immigration. The Old West as a whole can be appre- 

2 For the settled area in 1660, see the map by Lois Mathews in 
Channing, "United States" (N. Y., 1905), i, p. 510; and by Albert Cook 
Myers in Avery, "United States" (Cleveland, 1905), ii, following p. 398. 
In Channing, ii, following p. 603, is Marion F. Lansing's map of set- 
tlement in 1760, which is on a rather conservative basis, especially the 
part showing the interior of the Carolinas. 

Contemporaneous maps of the middle of the eighteenth century, use- 
ful in studying the progress of settlement, are : Mitchell, " Map of the 
British Colonies" (1755); Evans, "Middle British Colonies" (1758); 
Jefferson and Frye, "Map of Virginia" (1751 and 1755). 

On the geograpliical conditions, see maps and text in Powell, " Physi- 
ographic Regions"' (N. Y., 1896), and Willis, "Northern Appalachians," 
in " Physiography of the United States " (N. Y., 1896) , pp. 73-82, 169- 
176, 196-201. 



THE OLD WEST 69 

ciated only by obliterating the state boundaries which conceal 
its unity, by correlating the special and fragmentary studies, 
and by filling the gaps in the material for understanding the 
formation of its society. The present paper is rather a recon- 
naissance than a conquest of the field, a program for study 
of the Old West rather than an exposition of it. 

The end of the period proposed may be placed about 1763, 
and the beginning between 1676 and 1700. The termination of 
the period is marked by the Peace of Paris in 1763, and the 
royal proclamation of that year forbidding settlement beyond 
the Alleghanies. By this time the settlement of the Old West 
was fairly accomplished, and new advances ^vere soon made 
into the " Western Waters " beyond the mountains and into the 
interior of Vermont and New Hampshire. The isolation of the 
transmontane settlements, and the special conditions and doc- 
trines of the Revolutionary era during which they were formed, 
make a natural distinction between the period of which I am 
to speak and the later extension of the West. 

The beginning of the period is necessarily an indeterminate 
date, owing to the different times of colonizing the coastal areas 
which served as bases of operations in the westv/ard advance. 
The most active movements into the Old West occurred after 
1730. But in 1676 New England, having closed the exhausting 
struggle ^vith the Indians, known as King Philip's War, could 
regard her established settlements as secure, and go on to com- 
plete her possession of the interior. This she did in the midst 
of conflicts with the exterior Indian tribes which invaded her 
frontiers from New York and Canada during the French and 
Indian wars from 1690 to 1760, and under frontier conditions 
different from the conditions of the earlier Puritan colonization. 
In 1676, Virginia was passing through Indian fighting — keen- 
est along the fall line, where the frontier lay — and also expe- 
riencing a social revolt which resulted in the defeat of the 



70 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

democratic forces that sought to stay the progress of aristo- 
cratic control in the colony.^ The date marks the end of the 
period when the Virginia tidewater could itself be regarded 
as a frontier region, and consequently the beginning of a more 
special interest in the interior. 

Let us first examine the northern part of the movement into 
the back country. The expansion of New England into the 
vacant spaces of its own section, in the period we have chosen 
for discussion, resulted in the formation of an interior society 
which contrasted in many ways with that of the coast, and 
which has a special significance in Western history, in that il 
was this interior New England people who settled the Greater 
New England in central and western New York, the Wyoming 
Valley, the Connecticut Reserve of Ohio, and much of the 
prairie areas of the Old Northwest. It is important to realize 
that the Old West included interior New England. 

The situation in New England at the close of the seventeenth 
century is indicated by the Massachusetts act of 1694 enumerat- 
ing eleven towns, then on the frontier and exposed to raids, 
none of which might be voluntarily deserted without leave of 
the governor and council, on penalty of loss of their freeholds 
by the landowners, or fine of other inhabitants.* 

Thus these frontier settlers were made substantially gar- 
risons, or " mark colonies." Crowded into the palisades of the 
town, and obliged in spite of their poverty to bear the brunt of 
Indian attack, their hardships are illustrated in the manly but 
pathetic letters of Deerfield's minister, Mr. Williams,^ in 1704. 
Parkman succinctly describes the general conditions in these 
words: ^ 

2 See Osgood, "American Colonies" (N. Y., 1907), iii, chap. iii. 
•* See chapter ii, ante, 

5 Sheldon, "Deerfield" (Deerfield, Mass., 1895), i, p. 288. 

6 Parkman, " Frontenac " (Boston, 1898), p. 390; compare his descrip- 



THE OLD WEST 71 

The exposed frontier of New England was 
^ between two and three hundred miles long, and 
consisted of farms and hamlets loosely scat- 
tered through an almost impervious forest. ... 
Even in so-called villages the houses were far 
apart, because, except on the seashore, the people 
lived by farming. Such as were able to do so 
fenced their dwellings with palisades, or built 
them of solid timber, with loopholes, a projecting 
upper story like a block house, and sometimes a 
flanker at one or more of the corners. In the 
more considerable settlements the largest of these 
fortified houses was occupied in time of danger by 
armed men and served as a place of refuge for the 
neighbors. 

Into these places, in days of alarm, were crowded the out- 
lying settlers, just as was the case in later times in the Ken- 
tucky " stations." 

In spite of such frontier conditions, the outlying towns con- 
tinued to multiply. Between 1720 and the middle of the cen- 
tury, settlement crept up the Housatonic and its lateral valley 
into the Berkshires. About 1720 Litchfield was established; 
in 1725, Sheffield; in 1730, Great Barrington; and in 1735 
a road was cut and towns soon established between Westfield 
and these Housatonic settlements, thus uniting them with 
the older extensions along the Connecticut and its tribu- 
taries. 

In this period, scattered and sometimes unwelcome Scotch- 
Irish settlements were established, such as that at Londonderry, 
New Hampshire, and in the Berkshires, as well as in the region 

lion of Deerfield in 1704, in "Half Century of Conflict" (Boston, 1898), 
i, p. 55. 



72 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

won in Kirtg Philip's War from the Nipmucks, whither there 
came also Huguenots.^ 

In King George's War, the Connecticut River settlers found 
their frontier protection in such rude stockades as those at the 
sites of Keene, of Charlestown, New Hampshire (Number 
Four), Fort Shirley at the head of Deerfield River (Heath), 
and Fort Pelham (Rowe) ; while Fort Massachusetts (Adams) 
guarded the Hoosac gateway to the Hoosatonic Valley. These 
frontier garrisons and the self-defense of the backwoodsmen 
of New England are well portrayed in the pages of Paikman.'^ 
At the close of the war, settlement again expanded into the 
Berkshires, where Lennox, West Hoosac (Williamstown), and 
Pittsfield were established in the middle of the century. 
Checked by the fighting in the last French and Indian War, 
the frontier went forward after the Peace of Paris (1763) at 
an exceptional rate, especially into Vermont and interior 
New Hampshire. An anonymous writer gives a contemporary 
view of the situation on the eve of the Revolution: ^ 

The richest parts remaining to be granted are on 
the northern branches of the Connecticut river, 
towards Crown Point where are great districts of 
fertile soil still unsettled. The North part of New 
Hampshire, the province of Maine, and the terri- 
tory of Sagadahock have but few settlements in 
them compared with the tracts yet unsettled. . . . 

I should further observe that these tracts have 
since the peace [i. e., 1763], been settling pretty 
fast: farms on the river Connecticut are every day 
extending beyond the old fort Dummer, for near 

7Hanna, "Scotch Irish" (N. Y. and London, 1902), ii, pp. 17-24. 

8 " Half Century of Conflict," ii, pp. 214-234. 

9 " American Husbandry " (London, 1775) , i, p. 47. 



THE OLD WEST 73 

thirty miles; and will in a few years reach to 
Kohasser which is nearly two hundred miles; not 
that such an extent will be one-tenth settled, but the 
new-comers do not fix near their neighbors, and 
go on regularly, but take spots that please them 
best, though twenty or thirty miles beyond any 
others. This to people of a sociable disposition in 
Europe would appear very strange, but the Amer- 
icans do not regard the near neighborhood of other 
farmers; twenty or thirty miles by water they 
esteem no distance in matters of this sort; besides 
in a country that promises well the intermediate 
space is not long in filling up. Between Connecti- 
cut river and Lake Champlain upon Otter Creek, 
and all along Lake Sacrament [George] and the 
rivers that fall into it, and the whole length of 
Wood Creek, are numerous settlements made sixice 
the peace.^^ 

For nearly a hundred years, therefore. New England com- 
munities had been pushed out to new frontiers in the intervals 
between the almost continuous wars with the French and 
Indians. Probably the most distinctive feature in this 
frontier was the importance of the community type of 
settlement; in other words, of the towns, with their Puritan 
ideals in education, morals, and religion. This has always 
been a matter of pride to the statesmen and annalists of New 
England, as is illustrated by these words of Holland in his 
"Western Massachusetts," commenting on the settlement of 
the Connecticut Valley in villages, whereby in his judgment 
morality, education, and urbanity were preserved: 

10 For the extent of New England settlements in 1760, compared with 
1700, see the map in Channing, " United States," ii, at end of volume. 



74 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

The influence of this policy can only be fully 
appreciated when standing by the side of the soli- 
tary settler's hut in the West, where even an East- 
ern man has degenerated to a boor in manners, 
where his children have grown up uneducated, 
and where the Sabbath has become an unknown 
day, and religion and its obligations have ceased 
to exercise control upon the heart and life. 

Whatever may be the real value of the community type of 
settlement, its establishment in New England was intimately 
connected both with the Congregational religious organization 
and with the land system of the colonies of that section, under 
which the colonial governments made grants — not in tracts to 
individuals, but in townships to groups of proprietors who 
in turn assigned lands to the inhabitants without cost. The 
typical form of establishing a town was as follows: On appli- 
cation of an approved body of men, desiring to establish a 
new settlement, the colonial General Court would appoint a 
committee to view the desired land and report on its fit- 
ness; an order for the grant would then issue, in varying 
areas, not far from the equivalent of six miles square. In the 
eighteenth century especially, it was common to reserve cer- 
tain lots of the town for the support of schools and the min- 
istry. This was the origin of that very important feature of 
Western society, federal land grants for schools and colleges.^^ 
The General Courts also made regulations regarding the com- 
mon lands, the terms for admitting inhabitants, etc., and thus 
kept a firm hand upon the social structure of the new settle- 
ments as they formed on the frontier. 

This practice, seen in its purity in the seventeenth century 

"Schafer, "Land Grants for Education," Univ. of Wis. Bulletin 
(Madison, 1902), chap. iv. 



THE OLD WEST 75 

especially, was markedly different from the practices of other 
colonies in the settlement of their back lands. For during 
most of the period New England did not use her wild lands, or 
public domain, as a source of revenue by sale to individuals or 
to companies, with the reservation of quit-rents; nor attract 
individual settlers by " head rights,*' or fifty-acre grants, after 
the Virginia type; nor did the colonies of the New England 
group often make extensive grants to individuals, on the ground 
of special services, or because of influence with the government, 
or on the theory that the grantee would introduce settlers on 
his grant. They donated their lands to groups of men who 
became town proprietors for the purpose of establishing com- 
munities. These proprietors were supposed to hold the lands 
in trust, to be assigned to inhabitants under restraints to ensure 
the persistence of Puritan ideals. 

During most of the seventeenth century the proprietors 
awarded lands to the new-comers in accordance with this theory. 
But as density of settlement increased, and lands grew scarce 
in the older towns, the proprietors began to assert their legal 
right to the unoccupied lands and to refuse to share them with 
inhabitants who were not of the body of proprietors. The dis- 
tinction resulted in class conflicts in the towns, especially in the 
eighteenth century,^ ^ over the ownership and disposal of the 
common lands. 

The new settlements, by a process of natural selection, 
would afl'ord opportunity to the least contented, whether be- 

1- On New England's land system see Osgood, " American Colonies " 
(N. Y., 1904), i, chap, xi; and Eggleston, "Land Syslem of the New 
England Colonies," Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies (Baltimore, 1886), iv. 
Compare the account of Virginia, about 1696, in " Mass. Hist. Colls." 
(Boston, 1835), Isl series, v, p. 129, for a favorable view of the New 
England town system; and note the probable influence of New Eng- 
land's system upon Virginia's legislation about 1700. See chapter ii, 
ante. 



76 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

cause of grievances, or ambitions, to establish themselves. 
This tended to produce a Western flavor in the towns on the 
frontier. But it was not until the original ideals of the land 
system began to change, that the opportunity to make new 
settlements for such reasons became common. As the eco- 
nomic and political ideal replaced the religious and social 
ideal, in the conditions under which new towns could be estab- 
lished, this became more possible. 

Such a change was in progress in the latter part of the 
seventeenth century and during the eighteenth. In 1713, 1715, 
and 1727, Massachusetts determined upon a policy of locating 
towns in advance of settlement, to protect her boundary claims. 
In 1736 she laid out five towns near the New Hampshire bor- 
der, and a year earlier opened four contiguous towns to con- 
nect her Housatonic and Connecticut Valley settlements.^^ 
Grants in non-adjacent regions were sometimes made to old 
towns, the proprietors of which sold them to those who wished 
to move. 

The history of the town of Litchfield illustrates the increas- 
ing importance of the economic factor. At a time when Con- 
necticut feared that Andros might dispose of the public lands 
to the disadvantage of the colony, the legislature granted a 
large part of Western Connecticut to the towns of Hartford 
and Windsor, pro forma, as a means of withdrawing the lands 
from his hands. But these towns refused to give up the lands 
after the danger had passed, and proceeded to sell part of 
them.^* Riots occurred when the colonial authorities attempted 
to assert possession, and the matter was at length compromised 

13 Amelia C. Ford, "Colonial Precedents of our National Land Sys- 
tem," citing Massachusetts Bay, House of Rep. "Journal," 1715, pp. 
5, 22, 46; Hutchinson, "History of Massachusetts Bay" (London, 1768), 
ii, p. 331; Holland, "Western Massachusetts" (Springfield, 1855), pp. 
66, 169. 

""Conn. Colon. Records" (Hartford. 1874), viii, p, 134. 



THE OLD WEST 77 

in 1719 by allowing Litclifield to be settled in accordance 
with the town grants, while the colony reserved the larger 
part of northwestern Connecticut. In 1737 the colony dis- 
posed of its last unlocated lands by sale in lots. In 1762 
Massachusetts sold a group of entire townships in the Berk- 
shires to the highest bidders.^^ 

But the most striking illustration of the tendency, is afforded 
by the " New Hampshire grants " of Governor Wentworth, 
who, chiefly in the years about 1760, made grants of a hun- 
dred and thirty towns west of the Connecticut, in what is now 
the State of Vermont, but v/hich was then in dispute between 
New Hampshire and New York. These grants, while in form 
much like other town grants, were disposed of for cash, chiefly 
to speculators who hastened to sell their rights to the throngs of 
land-seekers who, after the peace, began to pour into the Green 
Mountain region. 

It is needless to point out how this would afi'ect the move- 
Tfient of Western settlement in respect to individualistic specu- 
lation in public lands; how it would open a career to the land 
jobbers, as well as to the natural leaders in the competitive 
movement for acquiring the best lands, for laying out town sites 
and building up new communities under " boom " conditions. 
The migratory tendency of New Englanders was increased by 
this gradual change in its land policy; the attachment to a 

15 Holland, " Western Massachusetts," p. 197. See the comments of 
Hutchinson in his " History of Massachusetts Bay," ii, pp. 331, 332. 
Compare the steps of Connecticut men in 1753 and 1755 to secure a land 
grant in Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania, for the Susquehanna Company, 
and the Connecticut governor's remark that there was no unappropriated 
land in the latter colony — "Pa. Colon. Records" (Harrisburg, 1851), 
V, p. 771; "Pa. Archives," 2d series, xviii, contains the important docu- 
ments, with much valuable information on the land system of the Wyo- 
ming Valley region. See also General Lyman's projects for a Mississippi 
colony in the Yazoo delta area — all indicative of the pressure for land 
and the speculative spirit. 



78 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

locality was diminished. The later years showed increasing 
emphasis by New England upon individual success, greater 
respect for the self-made man who, in the midst of opportuni- 
ties under competitive conditions, achieved superiority. The 
old dominance of town settlement, village moral police, and 
traditional class control gave way slowly. Settlement in com-* 
munities and rooted Puritan habits and ideals had enduring 
influences in the regions settled by New Englanders; but it was 
jin this Old West, in the years just before the Revolution, that 
-/individualism began to play an important role, along with the 
traditional habit of expanding in organized communities. 

The opening of the Vermont towns revealed more fully than 
before, the capability of New Englanders to become democratic 
pioneers, under characteristic frontier conditions. Their eco- 
nomic life was simple and self-sufiicing. They readily adopted 
lynch law (the use of the " birch seal " is familiar to readers of 
Vermont history) to protect their land titles in the troubled 
times when these " Green Mountain Boys " resisted New York's 
assertion of aulhority. They later became an independent 
Revolutionary state with frontier directness, and in very many 
respects iheir history in the Revolutionary epoch is similar to 
that of settlers in Kentucky and Tennessee, both in assertion of 
{he right to independent self government and in a frontier sep- 
aratism. '" Vermont may be regarded as tht culmination of the 
frontier movement which I have been describing in New Eng- 
land. 

By this time two distinct New Englands existed — the 
one coastal, and dominated by commercial interests and the 
established congregational churches; the other a primitive 

1^ Compare Vermont's dealings with the British, and the negotiations 
of Kentucky and Tennessee leaders with Spaniards and British. See 
Amer. Hist. Review, i, p. 252, note 2, for references on Vermont a 
Revolutionary philosophy and influence. 



THE OLD WEST 79 

agricultural area, democratic in principle, and with various 
sects increasingly indifferent to the fear of " innovation " which 
the dominant classes of the old communities felt. Already 
speculative land companies had begun New England settle- 
ments in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania, as well as on 
the lower Mississippi; and New England missions among the 
Indians, such as that at Stockbridge, were beginning the note- 
worthy religious and educational expansion of the section to 
the west. 

That this movement of expansion had been chiefly from south 
to north, along the river valleys, should not conceal from us 
the fact that it was in essential characteristics a Western move- 
ment, especially in the social traits that were developing. Even 
the men who lived in the long line of settlements on the Maine 
coast, under frontier conditions, and remote from the older 
centers of New England, developed traits and a democratic 
spirit that relate them closely to the Westerners, in spite of the 
fact that Maine is " down east " by preeminence.^^ 

The frontier of the Middle region in this period of the for- 
mation of the Old West, was divided into two parts, which 
happen to coincide with the colonies of New York and Pennsyl- 
vania. In the latter colony the trend of settlement was into 
the Great Valley, and so on to the Southern uplands; while the 
advance of settlement in New York was like that of New Eng- 
land, chiefly northward, following the line of Hudson River. 

The Hudson and the Mohawk constituted the area of the Old 
West in this part of the eighteenth century. With them were 
associated the Wallkill, tributary to the Hudson, and Cherry 
Valley near the Mohawk, along the sources of the Susquehanna. 
The Berkshires walled the Hudson in to the east; the Adiron- 
dacks and the Catskills to the west. Where the Mohawk Val- 

17 See H. C. Emery, " Artemas Jean Haynes " (New Haven, 1908) , 
pp. 8-10. 



80 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

ley penetrated between the mountainous areas, the Iroquois 
Indians were too formidable for advance on such a slender 
line. Nothing but dense settlement along the narrow strip 
of the Hudson, if even that, could have furnished the necessary 
momentum for overcoming the Indian barrier; and this pres- 
sure was lacking, for the population was comparatively sparse 
in contrast with the task to be performed. What most needs 
discussion in the case of New York, therefore, is not the history 
of expansion as in other sections, but the absence of expansive 
power. 

The fur-trade had led the way up the Hudson, and made 
beginnings of settlements at strategic points near the confluence 
of the Mohawk. But the fur-trader was not followed by a 
tide of pioneers. One of the most important factors in restrain- 
ing density of population in New York, in retarding the settle- 
ment of its frontier, and in determining the conditions there, 
was the land system of that colony. 

From the time of the patroon grants along the lower Hudson, 
great estates had been the common form of land tenure. 
Rensselaerswyck reached at one time over seven hundred thou- 
sand acres. These great patroon estates were confirmed by the 
English governors, who in their turn followed a similar policy. 
By 1732 two and one-half million acres were engrossed in 
manorial grants.^^ In 1764, Governor Golden wrote ^^ that 
three of the extravagant grants contain, 

as the proprietors claim, above a million acres 
each, several others above 200,000. * * * 
Although these grants contain a great part of the 
province, they are made in trifling acknov/ledge- 
ments. The far greater part of them still remain 

18 Ballagh, in Amer. Hist. Assoc. " Report," 1897, p. 110. 
18 " N. Y. Colon. Docs," vii, pp. 654, 795. 



THE OLD WEST 81 

uncultivated, without any benefit to the commu- 
nity, and are likewise a discouragement to the set- 
tling and improving the lands in the neighborhood 
of them, for from the uncertainty of their bound- 
aries, the patentees of these great tracts are daily 
enlarging their pretensions, and by tedious and 
most expensive law suits, distress and ruin poor 
families who have taken out grants near them. 

He adds that " the proprietors of the great tracts are not 
only freed from the quit-rents, which the other landholders in 
the province pay, but by their influence in the assembly are 
freed from every other public tax on their lands." 

In 1769 it was estimated that at least five-sixths of the inhab- 
itants of Westchester County lived within the bounds of the 
great manors there.^^ In Albany County the Livingston manor 
spread over seven modern townships, and the great Van Rens- 
selaer manor stretched twenty-four by twenty-eight miles along 
the Hudson; while still farther, on the Mohawk, were the vast 
possessions of Sir William Johnson.^^ 

20 Becker, in Amer. Hist. Review, vi, p. 261. 

21 Becker, loc. cit. For maps of grants in New York, see O'Callaghan, 
"Doc. Hist, of N. Y." (Albany, 1850), i, pp. 421, 774; especially South- 
ier, " Chorographical Map of New York " ; Winsor, *' America," v, p. 
236. In general on these grants, consult also " Doc. Hist, of N. Y.," 
i, pp. 249-257; "N. Y. Colon. Docs.," iv, pp. 397, 791, 874; v, pp. 459, 
651, 805; vi, pp. 486, 549, 743, 876, 950; Kip, "Olden Time" (N. Y., 
1872), p. 12; Scharf, "History of Westchester County" (Phila., 1886), i, 
p. 91 ; Libby, " Distribution of Vote on Ratification of Constitution " 
(Madison, 1894), pp. 21-25. 

For the region of the Wallkill, including New Paltz, etc., see Eager, 
"Outline History of Orange County, New York" (Newburgh, 1846-47) ; 
and Ruttenber and Clark, "History of Orange County" (Phila., 1881), 
pp. 11-20. On Cherry Valley and upper Susquehanna settlements, in 
general, in New York, see Halsey, " Old New York Frontier," pp. 5, 119, 
and the maps by De Witt and Southier in O'Callaghan, " Doc. Hist, of 
N. Y.," i, pp. 421, 774. 



82 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

It was not simply that the grants were extensive, but that the 
policy of the proprietors favored the leasing rather than the 
sale of the lands — frequently also of the stock, and taking 
payment in shares. It followed that settlers preferred to go to 
frontiers where a more liberal land policy prevailed. At one 
time it seemed possible that the tide of German settlement, 
which finally sought Pennsylvania and the up-country of the 
South, might fiow into New York. In 1710, Governor Hunter 
purchased a t/act in Livingston's manor and located nearly 
fifteen hundred Palatines on it to produce naval stores."^ But 
the attempt soon failed; the Germans applied to the Indians 
on Schoharie Creek, a branch of the Mohawk, for a grant of 
land and migrated there, only to find that the governor had 
already granted the land. Again were the villages broken up, 
some remaining and some moving farther up the Mohawk, 
where they and accessions to their number established the fron- 
tier settlemenLs about Palatine Bridge, in the region where, in 
the Revolution, Herkimer led these German frontiersmen to 
stem the British attack in the battle of Oriskany. They consti- 
tuted the most effective military defense of Mohawk Valley, 
Still another portion took their way across to the waters of the 
Susquehanna, and at Tulpehockon Creek began an important 
center of German settlement in the Great Valley of Pennsyl- 
vania.^^ 

The most important aspect of the history of the movement 
into the frontier of New York at this period, therefore, was 
the evidence which it afforded that in the competition for set- 
Note the French Huguenots and Scotch-Irish in Orange County, and 
the Scotch-Irish settlers of Cherry Valley and their relation to London- 
derry, N. H., as well as the missionary visits from Stockbridge, Mass., 
to the upper Susquehanna. 

2- Lord, "Industrial Experiments" (Baltimore, 1898), p. 45; Diffen- 
derfer, "German Exodus" (Lancaster, Pa., 1897). 
23 See post. 



THE OLD WEST 83 

dement between colonies possessing a vast area of vacant land, 
those which imposed feudal tenures and undemocratic 
restraints, and which exploited settlers, were certain to lose. 

The manorial practice gave a bad name to New York as a 
region for settlement, which not even the actual opportunities 
in certain parts of the colony could counteract. The diplo- 
macy of New York governors during this period of the Old 
West, in securing a protectorate over the Six Nations and a 
consequent claim to their territory, and in holding them aloof 
from France, constituted the most effective contribution of that 
colony to the movement of American expansion. When lands 
of these tribes were obtained after Sullivan's expedition in the 
Revolution (in which New England soldiers played a prom- 
inent part), it was by the New England inundation into this 
interior that they were colonized. And it was under conditions 
lilce those prevailing in the later years of the expansion of 
settlements in New England itself, that this settlement of inte- 
rior and western New York was effected. 

The result was, that New York became divided into two dis- 
tinct peoples: the dwellers along Hudson Valley, and the 
Yankee pioneers of the interior. But the settlement of central 
and western New York, like the settlement of Vermont, is a 
story that belongs to the era in which the trans-Alleghany West 
was occupied. 

We can best consider the settlement of the share of the Old 
West which is located in Pennsylvania as a part of the migra- 
tion which occupied the Southern Uplands, and before entering 
upon this it will be advantageous to survey that part of the 
movement toward the interior which proceeded westward from 
the coast. First let us observe the conditions at the eastern 
edge of these uplands, along the fall line in Virginia, in the 
latter part of the seventeenth century, in order that the process 
and the significance of the movement may be better understood. 



84 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

About the time of Bacon's Rebellion, in Virginia, strenuous 
efforts were made to protect the frontier line which ran along 
the falls of the river, against the attacks of Indians. This 
" fall line," as the geographers call it, marking the head of 
navigation, and thus the boundary of the maritime or lowland 
South, runs from the site of Washington, through Richmond, 
and on to Raleigh, ?^orth Carolina, and Columbia, South Caro- 
lina. Virginia having earliest advanced thus far to the inte- 
rior, found it necessary in the closing years of the seventeenth 
century to draw a military frontier along this line. As early 
as 1675 a statute was enacted,^* providing that paid troops of 
five hundred men should be drawn from the midland and most 
secure parts of the country and placed on the "heads of the 
rivers " and other places fronting upon the Indians. What 
was meant by the " heads of the rivers," is shown by the fact 
that several of these forts were located either at the falls of 
the .rivers or just above tidewater, as follows: one on the lower 
Potomac in Stafford County; one near the fails of the Rappa- 
hannock; one on the Mattapony; one on the Pamunky; one at 
the falls of the James (near the site of Richmond) ; one near 
the falls of the Appomattox, and others on the Blackwater, the 
Nansemond, and the Accomac peninsula, all in the eastern part 
of Virginia. 

Again, in 1679, similar provision was made,^^ and an espe- 
cially interesting act was passed, making quasi manorial grants 
to Major Lawrence Smith and Captain William Byrd, " to seate 
certain lands at the head [falls] of Rappahannock and James 
river " respectively. This scheme failed for lack of approval 
by the authorities in England.^*^ But Byrd at the falls of the 

2*Hening, "Va. Statutes at Large" (N. Y., 1823), ii, p. 326. 

25 Ibid., p. 433. 

26Bassett, "Writings of WiUiam Byrd" (N. Y., 1901), p. xxL 



THE OLD WEST 85 

James near the present site of Richmond, Robert Beverley on 
the Rappahannock, and other frontier commanders on the York 
and Potomac, continued to undertake colonial defense. The 
system of mounted rangers was established in 1691, by which a 
lieutenant, eleven soldiers, and two Indians at the " heads " or 
falls of each great river were to scout for enemy,^^ and the 
Indian boundary line was strictly defined. 

By the opening years of the eighteenth century (1701), the 
assembly of Virginia had reached the conclusion that settlement 
would be the best means of protecting the frontiers, and that 
the best way of " settling in co-habitations upon the said land 
frontiers within this government will be by encouragements to 
induce societies of men to undertake the same." -^ It was 
declared to be inexpedient to have less than twenty fighting men 
in each " society," and provision was made for a land grant to 
be given to these societies (or towns) not less than 10,000 nor 
more than 30,000 acres upon any of the frontiers, to be held 
in common by the society. The power of ordering and manag- 
ing these lands, and the settling and planting of them, was to 
remain in the society. Virginia was to pay the cost of survey, 
also quit-rents for the first twenty years for the two-hundred - 
acre tract as the site of the " co-habitation." Within this two 
hundred acres each member was to have a half-acre lot for liv- 
ing upon, and a right to two hundred acres next adjacent, until 
the thirty thousand acres were taken up. The members of the 

2'^ Hening, iii, p. 82. Similar acts were passed almost annually in 
successive years of the seventeenth century; cf. loc. cit., pp. 98, 115, 
119, 126, 164; the system was discontinued in 1722 — see Beverley, 
"Virginia and its Government" (London, 1722), p. 234. 

It is interesting to compare the recommendation of Governor Dodge 
for Wisconsin Territory in 1836 — see V/is, Terr. House of Reps. " Jour- 
nal," 1836, pp. 11 et seq. 

28 Hening, iii, pp. 204-209. 



86 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

society were exempt from taxes for twenty years, and from the 
requirements of military duty except such as they imposed upon 
themselves. The resemblance to the New England town is ob- 
vious. 

" Provided alwayes," ran the quaint statute, " and it is the 
true intent and meaning of this act that for every five hundred 
acres of land to be granted in pursuance of this act there shall , 
be and shall be continually kept upon the said land one chris- 
tian man between sixteen and sixty years of age perfect of 
limb, able and fitt for service who shall alsoe be continually 
provided with a well fixed musquett or fuzee, a good pistoll, 
sharp simeter, tomahawk and five pounds of good clean pistoll 
powder and twenty pounds of sizable leaden bulletts or swan 
or goose shott to be kept within the fort directed by this act 
besides the powder and shott for his necessary or useful shoot- 
ing at game. Provided also that the said warlike christian 
man shall have his dwelling and continual abode within the 
space of two hundred acres of land to be laid out in a geometri- 
call square or as near that figure as conveniency will admit," 
etc. Within two years the society was required to cause a half 
acre in the middle of the " co-habitation " to be palisaded 
" with good sound pallisadoes at least thirteen foot long and 
six inches diameter in the middle of the length thereof, and set 
double and at least three foot within the ground. 

Such in 1701 was the idea of the Virginia tidewater assembly 
of a frontiersman, and of the frontier towns by which the Old 
Dominion should spread her population into the upland South. 
But the " warlike christian man " Avho actually came to furnish 
the firing line for Virginia, was destined to be the Scotch-Irish- 
man and the German with long rifle in place of " fuzee " and 
" simeter," and altogether too restless to have his continual 
abode within the space of two hundred acres. Nevertheless 
there are points of resemblance between this idea of societies 



THE OLD WEST 87 

settled about a fortified town and the later " stations " of Ken- 
tucky.-'^ 

By the beginning of the eighteenth century the engrossing 
of the lands of lowland Virginia had progressed so far, the 
practice of holding large tracts of wasteland for reserves in the 
great plantations had become so common, that the authorities 
of Virginia reported to the home government that the best lands 
were all taken up,^° and settlers were passing into North Caro- 
lina seeking cheap lands near navigable rivers. Attention was 
directed also to the Piedmont portions of Virginia, for by this 
time the Indians were conquered in this region. It was now 
possible to acquire land by purchase ^^ at five shillings sterling 
for fifty acres, as well as by head-rights for importation or set- 
tlement, and land speculation soon turned to the new area. 

Already the Piedmont had been somewhat explored.^- Even 
by the middle of the seventeenth century, fur-traders had fol- 
lowed the trail southwest from the James more than four hun- 
dred miles to the Catawbas and later to the Cherokees. Col. 
William Byrd had, as we have seen, not only been absorbing 
good lands in the lowlands, and defending his post at the falls 
of the James, like a Count of the Border, but he also engaged in 
this fur-trade and sent his pack trains along this trail through 
the Piedmont of the Carolinas,^^ and took note of the rich sav- 

29 Compare the law of 1779 in " Va. Revised Code" (1819), ii, p. 357; 
Ranck's " Boonesborough " (Louisville, 1901). 

^^ Bassett, " Writings of Byrd," p. xii ; " Calendar of British State 
Papers, Am. and W. I.," 1677-80 (London, 1896), p. 168. 

"1 Bassett, loc. cit., p. x, and Hening, iii, p. 304 (1705). 

22 [See Alvord and Bidgood, " First Explorations of the Trans-Alle- 
gheny Region."! 

^2 Bassett, " Writings of Byrd," pp. xvii, xviii, quotes Byrd's descrip- 
tion of the trail; Logan, "tipper South Carolina" (Columbia, 1859), 
i, p. 167; Adair describes the trade somewhat later; cf. Bartram, 
"Travels" (London, 1792), passim, and Monette, "Mississippi Valley" 
(N. Y,, 1846), ii, p. 13. 



88 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

annas of that region. Charleston traders engaged in rivalry 
for this trade. 

It was not long before cattle raisers from the older settle- 
ments, learning from the traders of the fertile plains and pea- 
vine pastures of this land, followed the fur-traders and erected 
scattered " cow-pens " or ranches beyond the line of planta- 
tions in the Piedmont. Even at the close of the seventeenth 
century, herds of wild horses and cattle ranged at the outskirts 
of the Virginia settlements, and were hunted by the planters, 
driven into pens, and branded somewhat after the manner of 
the later ranching on the Great Plains.^* Now the cow-drovers 
and the cow-pens ^^ began to enter the uplands. The Indians 
had by this time been reduced to submission in most of the 
Virginia Piedmont — as Governor Spotswood '^" reported in 
1712, living " quietly on our frontiers, trafficking with the 
Inhabitants." 

After the defeat of the Tuscaroras and Yemassees about this 
time in the Carolinas, similar opportunities for expansion 
existed there. The cattle drovers sometimes took thek herds 
from range to range; sometimes they were gathered perma- 
nently near the pens, finding the range sufficient throughout 
the year. They were driven to Charleston, or later some- 

34 Bruce, "Economic Hist, of Va." (N. Y., 1896), i, pp. 473, 475, 477. 

"^ See descriptions of cow-pens in Logan, " History of Upper S. C," 
i, p. 151; Barlram, "Travels," p. 308. On cattle raising generally in 
the Piedmont, see: Gregg, "Old Cheraws " (N. Y., 1867), pp. 68, 108- 
110; Salley, "Orangeburg" (Orangeburg, 1898), pp. 219-221; Lawson, 
"New Voyage to Carolina" (Raleigh, 1860), p. 135; Ramsay, "South 
Carolina" (Charleston, 1809), i, p. 207; J. F. D. Smyth, "Tour" (Lon- 
don, 1784), i, p. 143, ii, pp. 78, 97; Foote, "Sketches of N. C." (N. Y., 
1846), p. 77; "N. C. Colon. Records" (Raleigh, 1887), v, pp. xli, 1193, 
1223; "American Husbandry" (London, 1775), i, pp. 336, 350, 384; 
Hening, v. pp. 176, 245. 

36 Spotswood, "Letters" (Richmond, 1882), i, p. 167; compare Va. 
Magazine, iii, pp. 120, 189. 



THE OLD WEST 89 

times even to Philadelphia and Baltimore markets. By the 
middle of the century, disease worked havoc with them in 
South Carolina ^' and destroyed seven-eighths of those in North 
Carolina; Virginia made regulations governing the driving of 
cattle through her frontier counties to ayoid the disease, just 
as in our own time the northern cattlemen attempted to protect 
their herds against the Texas fever. 

Thus cattle raisers from the coast followed the fur -traders 
toward the uplands, and already pioneer farmers were strag- 
gling into the same region, soon to be outnumbered by the tide 
of settlement that flowed into the region from Pennsylvania. 

The descriptions of the uplands by contemporaneous writers 
are in glow^ing terms. Makemie, in his " Plain and Friendly 
Persuasion" (1705), declared "The best, richest, and most 
healthy part of your Country is yet to be inhabited, above the 
falls of every River, to the Mountains." Jones, in his " Present 
State of Virginia" (1724), comments on the convenience of 
tidewater transportation, etc., but declares that section "not 
nearly so healthy as the uplands and Barrens which serve for 
Ranges for Stock," although he speaks less enthusiastically 
of the savannas and marshes which lay in the midst of the 
forest areas. In fact, the Piedmont was by no means the 
unbroken forest that might have been imagined, for in addi- 
tion to natural meadows, the Indians had burned over large 
tracts.^^ It was a rare combination of woodland and pj^sture, 
with clear running streams and mild climate.^^ 

37 « N. C. Colon. Records," v, p. xli. 

38 Lawson, "Carolina" (Raleigh, 1860), gives a description early in 
the eighteenth century; his map is reproduced in Avery, " United States" 
(Qeveland, 1907), iii, p. 224. 

39 The advantages and disadvantages of the Piedmont regio'ji of the 
Carolinas in the middle of the eighteenth century are illusirated in 
Spangenburg's diary, in " N. C. Colon, Records," v, pp. 6, 7, 13, 14. 
Compare " American Husbandry," 1, pp. 220, 332, 357, 388. 



90 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

The occupation of the Virginia Piedmont received a special 
impetus from the interest which Governor Spotswood took in 
the frontier. In 1710 he proposed a plan for intercepting the 
French in their occupation of the interior, by inducing Virginia 
settlement to proceed along one side of James River only, 
until this column of advancing pioneers should strike the atten- 
uated line of French posts in the center. In the same year 
he sent a body of horsemen to the top of the Blue Ridge, where 
they could overlook the Valley of Virginia.^^ By 1714 he 
became active as a colonizer himself. Thirty miles above the 
falls of the Rappahannock, on the Rapidan at Germanna,*^ he 
settled a little village of German redemptioners (who in return 
for having the passage paid agreed to serve without wages for 
a term of years), to engage in his iron works, also to act as 
rangers on the frontier. From here, in 1716, with two compa- 
nies of rangers and four Indians, Governor Spotsw^ood and a 
band of Virginia gentlemen made a summer picnic excursion 
of two weeks across the Blue Ridge into the Shenandoah Val- 
ley. Sic jiivat transcendere montes was the motto of these 
Knights of the Golden Horse Shoe, as the governor dubbed 
them. But they were not the " warlike christian men " destined 
to occupy the frontier. 

Spotswood's interest in the advance along the Rappahannock, 
probably accounts, for the fact that in 1720 Spotsylvania and 

40 Spotswood, "Letters," i, p. 40. 

41 On Germanna see Spotswood, " Letters " (index) ; Fontaine's jour- 
nal in A. Maury, "Huguenot Family" (1853), p. 268; Jones, "Present 
State of Virginia" (N. Y., 1865), p. 59; Bassett, " Writings of Byrd," p. 
356; Va. Magazine, xiii, pp. 362, 365; vi, p. 385; xii, pp. 342, 350; xiv, 
p. 136. 

Spotswood's interest in the Indian trade on the southern frontier of 
Virginia is illustrated in his fort Christanna, on which the above refer- 
ences afford information. 

The contemporaneous account of Spotswood's expedition into Shen- 
andoah Valley is Fontaine's journey, cited above. 



THE OLD WEST 91 

Brunswick were organized as frontier counties of Virginia.** 
Five hundred dollars were contributed by the colony to the 
church, and a thousand dollars for arms and ammunition for 
the settlers in these counties. The fears of the French and 
Indians beyond the high mountains, were alleged as reasons 
for this advance. To attract settlers to these new counties, ^X^ 
they were (1723) exempt from purchasing the lands under the 
system of head rights, and from payment of quit-rents for 
seven years after 1721. The free grants so obtained were 
not to exceed a thousand acres. This was soon extended to 
six thousand acres, but with provision requiring the settlement 
of a certain number of families upon the grant within a certain 
time. In 1729 Spotswood was ordered by the Council to pro- 
duce " rights " and pay the quit-rents for the 59,786 acres 
which he claimed in this county. 

Other similar actions by the Council show that large hold- 
ings were developing there, also that the difficulty of estab- 
lishing a frontier democracy in contact with the area of expand- 
ing plantations, was very real.^^ By the time of the occupa- 
tion of the Shenandoah Valley, therefore, the custom was 
established in this part of Virginia,** of making grants of a 
thousand acres for each family settled. Speculative planters, 
influential with the Governor and Council secured grants of 
many thousand acres, conditioned upon seating a certain num- 
ber of families, and satisfying the requirements of planting. 
Thus what had originally been intended as direct grants to the 
actual settler, frequently became grants to great planters like 
Beverley, who promoted the coming of Scotch-Irish and Ger- 

42 See the excellent paper by C. E. Kemper, in Va. Magazine, xii, 
on " Early Westward Movement in Virginia." 

43 Compare Phillips, " Origin and Growth of the Southern Black 
Belts," in Amer. Hist. Review, xi, p. 799. 

*^Va, Magazine, xiii, p. 113. 



92 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

man settlers, or took advantage of the natural drift into the 
Valley, to sell lands in their grants, as a rule, reserving quit- 
rents. The liberal grants per family enabled these speculative 
planters, while satisfying the terms of settlement, to hold large 
portions of the grant for themselves. Under the lax require- 
ments, and probably still more lax enforcement, of the provi- 
sions for actual cultivation or cattle-raising,*^ it was not diffi- 
cult to hold such wild land. These conditions rendered pos- 
sible the extension of a measure of aristocratic planter life in 
the course of time to the Piedmont and Valley lands of Vir- 
ginia. It must be added, however, that some of the newcomers, 
both Germans and Scotch-Irish, like the Van Meters, Stover, 
and Lewis, also showed an ability to act as promoters in locat- 
ing settlers and securing grants to themselves. 

In the northern part of the Shenandoah Valley, lay part of 
the estate of Lord Fairfax, some six million acres in extent, 
which came to the family by dower from the old Culpeper and 
Arlington grant of Northern Neck. In 1748, the youthful 
Washington was surveying this estate along the upper waters 
of the Potomac, finding a bed under the stars and learning the 
life of the frontier. 

Lord Fairfax established his own Greenway manor,*® and 
divided his domain into other manors, giving ninety-nine-year 
leases to settlers already on the ground at twenty shillings 
annually per hundred acres; while of the new-comers he ex- 
acted two shillings annual quit-rent for this amount of land 
in fee simple. Litigation kept land titles uncertain here, for 
many years. Similarly, Beverley's manor, about Staunton, 
represented a grant of 118,000 acres to Beverley and his asse- 
ss "Revised Code of Virginia" (Richmond, 1819), ii, p. 339. 
^^Mag. Amer. Hist., xiii, pp. 217, 230; Winsor, " Narr. and Crit. 
Hist, of America," v, p. 268; Kercheval, "The Valley" (Winchester, 
Va., 1833), pp. 67, 209; Va. Magazine, xiii, p. 115. 



THE OLD WEST 93 

ciates on condition of placing the proper number of families 
on the tract.*^ Thus speculative planters on this frontier 
shared in the movement of occupation and made an aristo- 
cratic element in the up-country; but the increasing proportion 
of Scotch-Irish immigrants, as well as German settlers, to- 
gether with the contrast in natural conditions, made the inte- 
rior a different Virginia from that of the tidewater. 

As settlement ascended the Rappahannock, and emigrants 
began to enter the Valley from the north, so, contempora- 
neously, settlement ascended the James above the falls, suc- 
ceeding to the posts of the fur-traders.'^^ Goochland County 
was set off in 1728, and tlie growth of population led, as early 
as 1729, to proposals for establishing a city (Richmond) at 
the falls. Along the upper James, as on the Rappahannock, 
speculative planters bought headrights and located settlers 
and tenants to hold their grants.**^ Into this region came 
natives of Virginia, emigrants from the British isles, and scat- 
tered representatives of other lands, some of them coming up 
the James, others up the York, and still others arriving with 
the southward-moving current along both sides of the Blue 
Ridge. 

Before 1730 few settlers lived above the mouth of the Riv- 
anna. In 1732 Peter Jefferson patented a thousand acres at 
the eastern opening of its mountain gap, and here, under fron- 
tier conditions, Thomas Jefferson was born in 1743 near his 
later estate of Monticello. About him were pioneer farmers, 
as well as foresighted engrossers of the land. In the main his 
country was that of a democratic frontier people — Scotch- 

4""WiUiam and Mary College Quarterly" (Williamsburg, 1895), iii, 
p. 226. See Jefferson and Frye, " Map of Virginia, 1751," for location of 
this and Borden's manor. 

4« Brown, " The CabeUs " (Boston, 1895) , p. 53. 

^^Loc. cit., pp. 57, 66. 



94 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Irish Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, and other sects,^^ out of 
sympathy with the established church and the landed gentry 
of the lowlands. This society in which he was born, was to 
find in Jefferson a powerful exponent of its ideals.^^ Patrick 
Henry was born in 1736 above the falls, not far from Rich- 
mond, and he also was a mouthpiece of interior Virginia in the 
Revolutionary era. In short, a society was already forming 
in the Virginia Piedmont which was composed of many sects, 
of independent yeomen as well as their great planter leaders, 
— a society naturally expansive, seeing its opportunity to deal 
in unoccupied lands along the frontier which continually 
moved toward the West, and in this era of the eighteenth cen- 
tury dominated by the democratic ideals of pioneers rather 
than by the aristocratic tendencies of slaveholding planters. 
As there were two New Englands, so there were by this time 
two Virginias, and the uplands belonged with the Old West. 

The advance across the fall line from the coast was, in North 
Carolina, m.uch slower than in Virginia. After the Tuscarora 
War (1712-13) an extensive region west from Pamlico Sound 
was opened (1724). The region to the north, about the Roa- 
noke, had before this begun to receive frontier settlers, largely 
from Virginia. Their traits are interestingly portrayed in 
Byrd's " Dividing Line." By 1728 the farthest inhabitants 
along the Virginia boundary were frontiersmen about Great 
Creek, a branch of the Roanoke.^" The North Carolina com- 
missioners desired to stop running the line after going a hun- 
dred and seventy miles, on the plea that they were already fifty 
miles beyond the outermost inhabitant, and there would be no 
need for an age or two to carry the line farther; but the Vir- 

50 Meade, "Old Churches" (Phila., 1861), 2 vols.; Foote, "Sketches" 
(Phila., 1855) ; Brown, " The Cabells," p. 68. 

^^ Atlantic Monthly, vol. xci, pp. 83 et seq.; Ford, "Writing of 
Thomas Jefferson" (N. Y., 1892), i, pp. xix et seq. 

52Byrd, "Dividing Line" (Richmond, 1866), pp. 85, 271. 



THE OLD WEST 95 

ginia surveyors pointed out that already speculators were tak- 
ing up the land. A line from Weldon to Fayetteville would 
roughly mark the western boundary of North Carolina's sparse 
population of forty thousand souls.^^ 

The slower advance is explained, partly because of the later 
settlement of the Carolinas, partly because the Indians contin- 
ued to be troublesome on the flanks of the advancing popula- 
tion, as seen in the Tuscarora and Yemassee wars, and partly 
because the pine barrens running parallel with the fall line 
made a zone of infertile land not attractive to settlers. The 
North Carolina low country, indeed, had from the end of the 
seventeenth century been a kind of southern frontier for over- 
flow from Virginia; and in many ways was assimilated to the 
type of the up-country in its turbulent democracy, its variety 
of sects and peoples, and its primitive conditions. But under 
the lax management of the public lands, the use of "blank 
patents " and other evasions made possible the development of 
large landholding, side by side with headrights to settlers. 
Here, as in Virginia, a great proprietary grant extended across 
the colony — Lord Granville's proprietary was a zone embrac- 
ing the northern half of North Carolina. Within the area, 
sales and quit-rents were administered by the agents of the 
owner, with the result that uncertainty and disorder of an 
agrarian nature extended down to the Revolution. There were 
likewise great speculative holdings, conditioned on seating a 
certain proportion of settlers, into which the frontiersmen were 
drifting.^* But this system also made it possible for agents 
of later migrating congregations to establish colonies like that 
of the Moravians at Wachovia.^^ Thus, by the time settlers 

52 " N. C. Colon. Records," iii, p. xiii. Compare Hawks, " Hist, of 
North Carolina" (Fayetteville, 1859), map of precincts, 1663-1729. 

54Raper, "North Carolina" (N. Y., 1904), chap, v; W. R. Smith, 
"South Carolina" (N. Y., 1903), pp. 48, 57. 

ssClewell, "Wachovia" (N. Y., 1902). 



96 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

came into the uplands from the north, a land system existed 
similar to that of Virginia. A common holding was a square 
mile (640 acres), but in practice this did not prevent the accu- 
mulation of great estates.^^ Whereas Virginia's Piedmont area 
was to a large extent entered by extensions from the coast, 
that of North Carolina remained almost untouched by 1730.^^ 
The same is true of South Carolina. By 1730, settlement 
had progressed hardly eighty miles from the coast, even in the 
settled area of the lowlands. The tendency to engross the low- 
lands for large plantations was clear, here as elsewhere.^^ The 
surveyor-general reports in 1732 that not as many as a thou- 
sand acres within a hundred miles of Charleston, or within 
twenty miles of a river or navigable creek, were unpossessed. 
In 1729 the crown ordered eleven townships of twenty thou- 
sand acres each to be laid out in rectangles, divided into fifty 
acres for each actual settler under a quit-rent of four shillings 
a year for every hundred acres, or proportionally, to be paid 
after the first ten years.^^ By 1732 these townships, designed 
to attract foreign Protestants, were laid out on the great rivers 
of the colony. As they were located in the middle region, 
east of the fall line, among pine barrens, or in malarial lands 
in the southern corner of the colony, they all proved abortive 
as towns, except Orangeburg ^^ on the North Edisto, where 

56 Ballagh, in Amer. Hist. Assoc. " Report," 1897, pp. 120, 121, citing 
Bassett, in "Law Quarterly Review," April, 1895, pp. 159-161. 

5'^ See map in Hawks, " North Carolina." 

ssMcCrady, "South Carolina," 1719-1776 (N. Y., 1899, pp. 149, 151; 
Smith, " South Carolina," p. 40; Ballagh, in Amer. Hist. Assoc. " Report," 
1897, pp. 117-119; Brevard, "Digest of S. C. Laws" (Charleston, 1857), 
i, p. xi. 

59 McCrady, "South Carolina," pp. 121 et seq.; Phillips, "Transporta- 
tion in the Eastern Cotton Belt" (N. Y., 1908), p. 51. 

*^ This was not originally provided for among the eleven towns. For 
its history see Salley, " Orangeburg " — frontier conditions about 1769 
are described on pp. 219 et seq.; see map opposite p. 9. 



THE OLD WEST 97 

German redemptioners made a settlement. The Scotch-Irish 
Presbyterians who came to Williamsburg, on Black River, 
suffered hardships; as did the Swiss who, under the visionary 
leadership of Purry, settled in the deadly climate of Purrys- 
burg, on the lower Savannah. To Welsh colonists from Penn- 
sylvania there was made a grant — known as the " Welsh 
tract," embracing over 173,000 acres on the Great Pedee 
(Marion County) ^^ under headrights of fifty acres, also a 
bounty in provisions, tools, and livestock. 

These attempts, east of the fall line, are interesting as show- 
ing the colonial policy of marking out towns (which were to 
be politically-organized parishes, with representation in the 
legislature), and attracting foreigners thereto, prior to the 
coming of settlers from the North. 

The settlement of Georgia, in 1732, completed the southern 
line of colonization toward the Piedmont. Among the objects 
of the colony, as specified in the charters, were the relief of 
the poor and the protection of the frontiers. To guard against 
the tendency to engross the lands in great estates, already so 
clearly revealed in the older colonies, the Georgia trustees pro- 
vided that the grants of fifty acres should not be alienated or 
divided, but should pass to the male heirs and revert to the 
trustees in case heirs were lacking. No grant greater than 
five hundred acres was permitted, and even this was made con- 
ditionally upon the holder settling ten colonists. However, 
under local conditions and the competition and example of 
neighboring colonies, this attempt to restrict land tenure in 
the interest of democracy broke down by 1750, and Georgia's 
land system became not unlike that of the other Southern 
colonies.^^ 

In 1734, Salzburgers had been located above Savannah, and 

*i Gregg, " Old Cheraws," p. 44. 
«2 BaUagh, he. cit., pp. 119, 120. 



98 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

within seven years some twelve hundred German Protestants 
were dwelling on the Georgia frontier; while a settlement of 
Scotch Highlanders at Darien, near the mouth of the Altamaha, 
protected the southern frontier. At Augusta, an Indian trad- 
ing fort (1735), whence the dealers in peltry visited the Chero- 
kee, completed the familiar picture of frontier advance.^^ 
V We have now hastily surveyed the movement of the frontier 
of settlement westward from the lowlands, in the later years of 
the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth century. 
There is much that is common in the whole line of advance. 
The original settlers engross the desirable lands of the older 
area. Indented servants and new-comers pass to the frontier 
seeking a place to locate their headrights, or plant new towns. 
Adventurous and speculative wealthy planters acquire large 
holdings in the new areas, and bring over settlers to satisfy the 
requirements of seating and cultivating their extensive grants, 
thus building up a yeomanry of small landholders side by side 
with the holders of large estates. The most far-sighted of the 
new-comers follow the example of the planters, and petition 
for increasing extensive grants. Meanwhile, pioneers like 
Abraham Wood, himself once an indented servant, and gen- 
tlemen like Col. William Byrd — prosecuting the Indian trade 
from their posts at the " heads " of the rivers, and combining 
frontier protection, exploring, and surveying — make known 
the more distant fertile soils of the Piedmont. Already in the 
first part of the eighteenth century, the frontier population 
tended to be a rude democracy, with a large representation of 
Scotch-Irish, Germans, Welsh, and Huguenot French settlers, 
holding religious faiths unlike that of the followers of the 
established church in the lowlands. The movemxCnt of slaves 
into the region was unimportant, but not unknown. 

^3 Compare the description of Georgia frontier traders, cattle raisers, 
and land speculators, about 1773, in Bartram, " Travels," pp. 18, 36, 308. 



THE OLD WEST 99 

The Virginia Valley was practically unsettled in 1730, as 
was much of Virginia's Piedmont area and all the Piedmont 
area of the Carolinas. The significance of the movement of 
settlers from the North into this vacant Valley and Piedmont, 
behind the area occupied by expansion from the coast is, that 
it was geographically separated from the westward movement 
from the coast, and that it was sufficient in volume to recruit 
the democratic forces and postpone for a long time the process 
of social assimilation to the type of the lowlands. 

As has been pointed out, especially in the Carolinas a belt of 
pine barrens, roughly eighty miles in breadth, ran parallel 
with the fall line and thus discouraged western advance across 
this belt, even before the head of navigation was reached. In 
Virginia, the Blue Ridge made an almost equally effective 
barrier, walling off the Shenandoah Valley from the westward 
advance. At the same time this valley was but a continuation 
of the Great Valley, that ran along the eastern edge of the 
Alleghanies in southeastern Pennsylvania, and included in its 
mountain trough the Cumberland and Hagerstown valleys. In 
short, a broad limestone band of fertile soil was stretched 
within mountain walls, southerly from Pennsylvania to south- 
western Virginia; and here the watergaps opened the way to 
descend to the Carolina Piedmont. This whole area, a kind 
of peninsula thrust down from Pennsylvania, was rendered 
comparatively inaccessible to the westward movement from 
the lowlands, and was equally accessible to the population 
which was entering Pennsylvania.^* 

Thus it happened that from about 1730 to 1760 a generation 
of settlers poured along this mountain trough into the southern 
uplands, or Piedmont, creating a new continuous social and 
economic area, which cut across the artificial colonial boundary 

*>* See Willis, " Northern Appalachians," in " Physiography of the U. 
S." in National Geog. Soc. " Monographs " (N. Y., 1895) , no. 6. 



100 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

lines, disarranged the regular extension of local government 
from the coast westward, and built up a new Pennsylvania in 
contrast with the old Quaker colonies, and a new South in con- 
trast with the tidewater South. This New South composed the 
southern half of the Old West. 

From its beginning, Pennsylvania was advertised as a home 
for dissenting sects seeking freedom in the wilderness. But it 
was not until the exodus of German redemptioners,^'^ from 
about 1717, that the Palatinate and neighboring areas sent the 
great tide of Germans which by the time of the Revolution 
made them nearly a third of tlie total population of Pennsyl- 
vania. It has been carefully estimated that in 1775 over 
200,000 Germans lived in the thirteen colonies, chiefly along 
the frontier zone of the Old West. Of these, a hundred thou- 
sand had their home in Pennsylvania, mainly in the Great 
Valley, in the region which is still so notably the abode of the 
" Pennsylvania Dutch." ^« 

Space does not permit us to describe this movement of colon- 
ization.^" The entrance to the fertile limestone soils of the 
Great Valley of Pennsylvania was easy, in view of the low ele- 
vation of the South Mountain ridge, and the watergaps thereto. 
The continuation along the similar valley to the south, in 
Maryland and Virginia, was a natural one, especially as the 
increasing tide of emigrants raised the price of lands.*^^ In 

65 Diffenderfer, " German Immigration into Pennsylvania," in Pa. 
German Soc. " Proc," v, p. 10; " Redemptioners " (Lancaster, Pa., 
1900). 

^6 A. B. Faust, " German Element in the United States." 

^"^ See the bibliographies in Kuhns, '' German and Swiss Settlements 
of Pennsylvania" (N. Y., 1901); Wayland, "German Element of the 
Shenandoah Valley" (N. Y., 1908); Channing, "United States," ii, p. 
421; Griffin, "List of Works Relating to the Germans in the U. S." 
(Library of Congress, Wash., 1904). 

®® See in illustration, the letter in Myers, "Irish Quakers" (Swarth- 
more, Pa., 1902), p. 70. 



THE OLD WEST 101 

1719 the proprietor's price for Pennsylvania lands was ten 
pounds per hundred acres, and two shillings quit-rents. In 
1732 this became fifteen and one-half pounds, with a quit-rent 
of a half penny per acre/'-* During the period 1718 to 1732, 
when the Germans were coming in great numbers, the manage- 
ment of the lands fell into confusion, and many seated them- 
selves as squatters, without title.'^'^ This was a fortunate pos- 
sibility for the poor redempti oners, who had sold their serv- 
ice for a term of years in order to secure their transportation 
to America. 

By 1726 it was estimated that there were 100,000 squatters ;^^ 
and of the 670,000 acres occupied between 1732 and 1740, it 
is estimated that 400,000 acres were settled without grants."^ 
Nevertheless these m.ust ultimately be paid for, with interest, 
and the concession of the right of preemption to squatters made 
this easier. But it was not until 1755 that the governor offered 
land free from purchase, and this was to be taken only west of 
the Alleghanies."^^ 

Although the credit system relieved the difficulty in Pennsyl- 
vania, the lands of that colony were in competition with the 
Maryland lands, offered between 1717 and 1738 at forty shil- 
lings sterling per hundred acres, which in 1738 was raised to 
five pounds sterling.^^ At the same time, in the Virginia Val- 
ley, as will be recalled, free grants were being made of a 
thousand acres per family. Although large tracts of the Shen- 
andoah Valley had been granted to speculators like Beverley, 

69 Shepherd, " Proprietary Government in Pennsylvania " (N. Y., 1896) , 
p. 34. 

70 Gordon, " Pennsylvania " (Phila., 1829) , p. 225. 
7^1 Shepherd, loc. cit., pp. 49-51. 

72 Ballagh, Amer. Hist. Assoc. " Report," 1897, pp. 112, 113. Compare 
Smith, "St. Clair Papers" (Cincinnati, 1882), ii, p. 101. 
7^ Shepherd, loc. cit., p. 50. 
7*Mereness, "Maryland" (N. Y., 1901), p. 77. 



102 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Borden, and the Carters, as well as to Lord Fairfax, the owners 
sold six or seven pounds cheaper per hundred acres than did 
the Pennsylvania land officeJ^ Between 1726 and 1734, there- 
fore, the Germans began to enter this valley,^^ and before long 
they extended their settlements into the Piedmont of the Caro- 
linas,^^ being recruited in South Carolina by emigrants com- 
ing by way of Charleston — especially after Governor Glenn's 
purchase from the Cherokee in 1755, of the extreme western 
portion of the colony. Between 1750 and the Revolution, 
these settlers in the Caroiinas greatly increased in numbers. 

Thus a zone of almost continuous Germ.an settlements had 
been established, running from the head of the Mohawk in 
New York to the Savannah in Georgia. They had found the 
best soils, and they knew how to till them intensively and 
thriftily, as attested by their large, well-filled barns, good 
stock, and big canvas-covered Conestoga wagons. They pre- 
ferred to dwell in groups, often of the same religious denom- 
ination — Lutherans, Reformed, Moravians, Mennonites, and 
many lesser sects. The diaries of Moravian missionaries from 
Pennsylvania, who visited them, show how the parent congre- 
gations kept in touch with their colonies ^^ and how intimate, 

'"s" Calendar Va. State Papers" (Richmond, 1875), i, p. 217; on these 
grants see Kemper, " Early Westward Movement in Virginia " in Va. 
Mag., xii and xiii ; Wayland, " German Element of the Shenandoah Val- 
ley," William and Mary College Quarterly, iii. The speculators, both 
planters and new-comers, soon made application for lands beyond the 
Aileghanies. 

'6 In 1794 the Virginia House of Delegates resolved to publish the 
most important laws of the state in German. 

"^"^ See Bernheim, " German Settlements in the Caroiinas " (Phila., 
1872); Clewell, "Wachovia"; Allen, "German Palatines in N. C" 
(Raleigh, 1905). 

'''^ See Wayland, loc. cit., bibliography, for references; and especially 
Va. Mag., xi, pp. 113, 225, 370; xii, pp. 55, 134, 271; "German Amer- 
ican Annals," N. S. iii, pp. 342, 369; iv, p. 16; Clewell, "Wachovia; 
N. C. Colon. Records," v, pp. 1-14. 



THE OLD WEST 103 

ill general, was the bond of connection between this whole Ger- 
man frontier zone and that of Pennsylvania. 

Side by side with this German occupation of Valley and 
Piedmont, went the migration of the Scotch-Irish.''-' These 
lowland Scots had been planted in Ulster early in the seven- 
teenth century. Follov/ers of John Knox, they had the con- 
tentious individualism and revolutionary temper that seem nat- 
ural to Scotch Presbyterianism. They were brought up on the 
Old Testament, and in the doctrine of government by covenant 
or compact. In Ireland their fighting qualities had been 
revealed in the siege of Londonderry, v/here their stubborn 
resistance balked the hopes of James II. However, religious 
and political disabilities were imposed upon tliese Ulstermen, 
which made them discontented, and hard times contributed to 
detach tliem from their homes. Their movement to America 
was contemporaneous with the heavy German migration. By 
the Revolution, it is believed that a third of the population of 
Pennsylvania was Scotch-Irish; and it has been estimated, 
probably too liberally, that a half million came to the United 
States between 1730 and 1770.^^^ Especially after the Rebel- 
lion of 1745, large numbers of Highlanders came to increase 
the Scotch blood in the nation.*^ Some of the Scotch-Irish 
went to New England.^" Given the cold shoulder by congre- 
gational Puritans, they passed to unsettled lands about Wor- 
cester, to the frontier in the Berkshires, and in southern New 
Hampshire at Londonderry — whence came John Stark, a fron- 

"^ On the Scotch-Irish, see the bibhography in Green, " Scotch-Irish 
in America," Amer. Antiquarian Soc. "Proceedings," April, 1895; 
Ilanna, "Scotch-Irish" (N. Y., 1902), is a comprehensive presentation 
of the subject ; see also Myers, " Irish Quakers." 

sopiske, "Old Virginia" (Boston, 1897), ii, p. 394. Compare Line- 
han,."The Irish Scois and the Scotch-Irit^h " (Concord, N. H., 1902). 

81 See MacLean, "Scotch Highlanders in America" (Cleveland, 1900). 

82 Hanna, " Scotch-Irish," ii, pp. 17-24. 



104 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

tier leader in the French and Indian War, and the hero of 
Bennington in the Revolution, as well as the ancestors of Hor- 
ace Greeley and S. P. Chase. In New York, a Scotch-Irish 
settlement was planted on the frontier at Cherry Valley.*^ 
Scotch Highlanders came to the Mohawk,^* where they fol- 
lowed Sir William Johnson and became Tory raiders in the 
Revolution. 

But it was in Pennsylvania that the center of Scotch-Irish 
power lay. " These bold and indigent strangers, saying as 
their excuse when challenged for titles that we had solicited 
for colonists and they had come accordingly,"^^ and asserting 
that " it was against the laws of God and nature that so much 
land should be idle while so many christians wanted it to work 
on and to raise their bread," squatted on the vacant lands, 
especially in the region disputed between Pennsylvania and 
Maryland, and remained in spite of efforts to drive them off. 
Finding the Great Valley in the hands of the Germans, they 
planted their own outposts along the line of the Indian trad- 
ing path from Lancaster to Bedford; they occupied Cumber- 
land Valley, and before 1760 pressed up the Juniata somewhat 
beyond the narrows, spreading out along its tributaries, and 
by 1768 had to be warned off from the Redstone country to 
avoid Indian trouble. By the time of the Revolution, their set- 
tlements made Pittsburgh a center from which was to come a 
new era in Pennsylvania history. It was the Scotch-Irish and 
German fur-traders ^^' whose pack trains pioneered into the 
Ohio Valley in the days before the French and Indian wars. 
The messengers between civilization and savagery were such 

83Halsey, "Old New York Frontier" (N. Y., 1901). 
84MacLean, pp. 196-230. 

^5 The words of Logan, Penn's agent, in 1724, in Hanna, ii, pp. 60, 
63. 

86Winsor, "Mississippi Basin" (Boston, 1895), pp. 238-243. 



THE OLD WEST 105 

men,^'^ as the Irish Croghan, and the Germans Conrad Weiser 
and Christian Post. 

Like the Germans, the Scotch-Irish passed into the Shenan- 
doah Valley,^^ and on to the uplands of the South. In 1738 
a delegation of the Philadelphia Presbyterian synod was sent 
to the Virginia governor and received assurances of security of 
religious freedom; the same policy was followed by the Caro- 
linas. By 1760 a zone of Scotch-Irish Presbyterian churches 
extended from the frontiers of New England to the frontiers 
of South Carolina. This zone combined in part with the Ger- 
man zone, but in general Scotch-Irishmen tended to follow the 
valleys farther toward the mountains, to be the outer edge of 
this frontier. Along with this combined frontier stream were 
English, Welsh and Irish Quakers, and French Huguenots.^^ 

Among this moving mass, as it passed along the Valley into 
the Piedmont, in the middle of the eighteenth century, were 
Daniel Boone, John Sevier, James Robertson, and the ancestors 
of John C. Calhoun, Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Stone- 
wall Jackson, James K. Polk, Sam Houston, and Davy Crockett, 
while the father of Andrew Jackson came to the Carolina Pied- 
mont at the same time from the coast. Recalling that Thomas 
Jefferson's home was on the frontier, at the edge of the Blue 
Ridge, we perceive that these names represent the militant 
expansive movement in American life. They foretell the set- 
tlement across the Alleghanies in Kentucky and Tennessee; the 
Louisiana Purchase, and Lewis and Clark's transcontinental 

87 See Thwaites, "Early Western Travels" (Cleveland, 1904-06), i; 
Walton, "Conrad Weiser" (Phila., 1900); Heckewelder, "Narrative" 
(Phila., 1820). 

88 Christian, " Scotch-Irish Settlers in the Valley of Virginia " (Rich- 
mond, 1860). 

^'•^ Roosevelt gives an interesting picture of this society in his " Win- 
ning of the West" (N. Y., 1889-96), 1, chap, v; see also his citations, 
especially Doddridge, " Settlements and Indian Wars " (Wellsburgh, 
W. Va., 1824) . 



106 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

exploration; the conquest of the Gulf Plains in the War of 
^812-15; the annexation of Texas; the acquisition of Califor- 
nia and the Spanish Southwest. They represent, too, frontier 
democracy in its two aspects personified in Andrew Jackson 
and Abraham Lincoln. It was a democracy responsive to 
leadership, susceptible to waves of emotion, of a "high relig- 
eous voltage " — quick and direct in action. 

The volume of this Northern movement into the Southern 
uplands is illustrated by the statement of Governor Tryon, of 
North Carolina, that in the summer and winter of 1765 more 
than a thousand immigrant wagons passed through Salisbury, 
in that colony.^*^ Coming by families, or groups of families 
or congregations, they often drove their herds with them. 
Whereas in 1746 scarce a hundred fighting men were found in 
Orange and the western counties of North Carolina, there were 
in 1753 fully three thousand, in addition to over a thousand 
Scotch in the Cumberland; and they covered the province more 
or less thickly, from Hillsboro and Fayetteville to the moun- 
tains.^^ Bassett remarks that the Presbyterians received their 
first ministers from the synod of New York and Pennsylvania, 
and later on sent their ministerial students to Princeton Col- 
lege. " Indeed it is likely that the inhabitants of this region 
knew more about Philadelphia at that time than about Newbern 
or Edenton." ^^ 

We are now in a position to note briefly, in conclusion, some 
of the results of the occupation of this new frontier during the 
first half of the eighteenth century — some of the consequences 
of this formation of the Old West. 

I. A fighting frontier had been created all along the line 
from New England to Georgia, which bore the brunt of French 

90 Bassett, in Amer. Hist. Assoc. " Report," 1894, p. 145. 
®^ " N. C. Colon. Records," v, pp. xxxix, xl ; cf. p. xxi. 
^^Loc. cit., pp. 146, 147. 



THE OLD WEST 107 

and Indian attacks and gave indispensable service during the 
Revolution. The significance of this fact could only be devel- 
oped by an extended survey of the scattered border warfare of 
this era. We should have to see Rogers leading his New Eng- 
land Rangers, and Washington defending interior Virginia 
with his frontiersmen in their hunting shirts, in the French and 
Indian War. When all of the campaigns about the region of 
Canada, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson, central New York 
{Oriskany, Cherry Valley, Sullivan's expedition against the 
Iroquois), Wyoming Valley, western Pennsylvania, the Vir- 
ginia Valley, and the back country of the South are considered 
as a whole from this point of view, the meaning of the Old 
West will become more apparent. 

II. A new society had been established, differing in essen- 
tials from the colonial society of the coast. It was a demo- 
cratic self-sufficing, primitive agricultural society, in which 
individualism was more pronounced than the community life 
of the lowlands. The indented servant and the slave were not 
a normal part of its labor system. It was engaged in grain 
and cattle raising, not in producing staples, and it found a 
partial means of supplying its scarcity of specie by the peltries 
v»^hich it shipped to the coast. But the hunter folk were already 
pushing farther on; the cow-pens and the range were giving 
place to the small farm, as in our own day they have done in 
the cattle country. It was a region of hard work anc poverty, 
not of wealth and leisure. Schools and churches were secured 
under serious difficulty,^^ if at all; but in spite of the natural 

93 See the interesting account of Rev. Moses Waddell's school in South 
Carolina, on the upper Savannah, where the students, including John 
C. Calhoun, McDuffe, Legare, and Petigru, were educated in the wilder- 
ness. They lived in log huts in the woods, furnished their own sup- 
plies, or boarded near by, were called to the log school-house by horn 
for morning prayers, and then scattered in groups to the woods for 
study. Hunt, "Calhoun" (Phila., 1907), p. 13. 



108 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

tendencies of a frontier life, a large portion of the interior 
showed a distinctly religious atmosphere. 

III. The Old West began tlie jrovement of internal trade 
which developed home markets and diminished that colonial 
dependence on Europe in industrial matters shown by the 
maritime and staple-raising sections. Not only did Boston 
and other New England towns increase as trading centers 
when the back country settled up, but an even more significant 
interchange occurred along the Valley and Piedmont. The 
German farmers of the Great Valley brought their woven linen, 
knitted stockings, firkins of butter, dried apples, grain, etc., to 
Philadelphia and especially to Baltimore, which was laid out 
in 1730. To this city also came trade from the Shenandoah 
Valley, and even from the Piedmont came peltry trains and 
droves of cattle and hogs to the same market.^* The increase 
of settlement on the upper James resulted in the establishment 
of the city of Richmond at the falls of the river in 1737. 
Already the tobacco-planting aristocracy of the lowlands were 
finding rivals in the grain-raising area of interior Virginia and 
Maryland. Charleston prospered as the up-country of the 
Carolinas grew. Writing in the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, Governor Glenn, of South Carolina, explained the appar- 
ent diminution of the colony's shipping thus: ®^ 

Our trade with New York and Philadelphia was 
of this sort, draining us of all the little money and 
bills that we could gather from other places, for 
their bread, flour, beer, hams, bacon, and other 
things of their produce, all which, except beer, our 
new townships begin to supply us with which are 

9*Scharf, "Maryland" (Baltimore, 1879), ii, p. 61, and chaps, i and 
xviii ; Kercheval, " The Valley." 
»5 Weston, " Documents," p. 82. 



THE OLD WEST 109 

settled with very industrious and consequently 
thriving Germans. 

It was not long before this interior trade produced those 
rivalries for commercial ascendancy, between the coastwise 
cities, which still continue. The problem of internal improve- 
ments became a pressing one, and the statutes show increasing 
provision for roads, ferries, bridges, river improvements, etc.^^ 
The basis vras being laid for a national economy, and at the 
same time a ncv/ Sv>uice for frreign export was created. 

IV. The Old West raised the issues of iitivism and a 
lower standard of coriiforL In New England, Scotch-Irish 
Presbyterians had been frowned upon and pushed away by 
the Puritan townsmen.^^ In Pennsylvania, the coming of the 
Germans and the Scotch-Irish in such numbers caused grave 
anxiety. Indeed, a bill was passed to limit the importation 
of the Palatines, but it was vetoed.^^ Such astute observers as 
Franklin feared in 1753 that Pennsylvania would be unable 
to preserve its language and that even its government would 
become precarious.^^ " I remember," he declares, " when 
they modestly declined intermeddling in our elections, but 
now they come in droves and carry all before them, except in 
one or two counties;" and he lamented that the English could 
not remove their prejudices by addressing them in German.^ 
Dr. Douglas ^ apprehended that Pennsylvania would " degen- 
erate into a foreign colony " and endanger the quiet of the 
adjacent provinces. Edmund Burke, regretting that the Ger- 

^6 See, for example, Phillips, " Transportation in the Eastern Cotton 
Belt," pp. 21-53. 

97 Hanna, " Scotch-Irish," ii, pp. 19, 22-24. 

9sCobb, "Story of the Palatines" (Wilkes-Bane, Pa., 1897), p. 300, 
citing " Penn. Colon. Records," iv, pp. 225, 345. 

99 "Works" (Bigelow ed.), ii, pp. 296-299. 

i/fciU, iii, p. 297; cf. p. 221. 

2 "Summary" (1755), ii, p. 326. 



no THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

mans adhered to their own schools, literature, and language, 
and that they possessed great tracts without admixture of Eng- 
lish, feared that they would not blend and become one people 
with the British colonists, and that the colony was threatened 
with the danger of being wholly foreign. He also noted that 
" these foreigners by their industry, frugality, and a hard way 
of living, in which they greatly exceed our people, have in a 
manner thrust them out in several places." ^ This is a phe- 
nomenon with which a succession of later frontiers has famil- 
iarized us. In point of fact the " Pennsylvania Dutch " 
remained through our history a very stubborn area to assim- 
ilate, with corresponding effect upon Pennsylvania politics. 

It should be noted also that this coming of non-English 
stock to the frontier raised in all the colonies affected, ques- 
tions of naturalization and land tenure by aliens.* 

V. The creation of this frontier society — of which so large 
a portion differed from that of the coast in language and 
religion as well as in economic life, social structure, and ideals 
— produced an antagonism between interior and coast, which 
worked itself out in interesting fashion. In general this took 
these forms: contests between the property-holding class of tlie 
coast and the debtor class of the interior, where specie was 
lacking, and where paper money and a readjustment of the 
basis of taxation were demanded; contests over defective or 
unjust local government in the administration of taxes, fees, 
lands, and the courts; contests over apportionment in the legis- 
lature, whereby the coast was able to dominate, even when 
its white population was in the minority; contests to secure 
the complete separation of church and state; and, later, con- 
s'' European Settlements" (London, 1793), ii. p. 200 (1765); cf. 
Franklin, "Works" (N. Y., 1905-07), ii, p. 221, to the same effect. 

* Proper, " Colonial Immigration Laws," in Columbia Univ., " Studies," 
xii. 



THE OLD WEST 111 

tests over slavery, internal improvements, and party politics in 
general. These contests are also intimately connected wilh 
the political philosophy of the Revolution and with the devel- 
opment of American democracy. In nearly every colony prior 
to the Revolution, struggles had been in progress between the 
party of privilege, chiefly the Eastern men of property allied 
with the English authorities, and the democratic classes, strong- 
est in tlie West and the cities. 

This theme deserves more space than can here be allotted 
to it; but a rapid survey of conditions in this respect, along 
the whole frontier, will at least serve to bring cut the point. 

In New England as a whole, the contest is less in evidence. 
That part of the friction elsewhere seen as the result of defec- 
tive local government in the back couatry, was met by the 
efificiency of the town system; but between the interior and the 
coast there were struggles over apportionment and religious 
freedom. The former is illustrated by the convention that met 
in Dracut, Massachusetts, in 1776, to petition the States of 
Massachusetts and New Hampshire to relieve the financial dis- 
tress and unfair legislative representation. Sixteen of the bor- 
der towns of New Hampshire sent delegates to this convention. 
Two years later, these New Hampshire towns attempted to join 
Vermont.^ As a Revolutionary State, Vermont itself was an 
illustration of the same tendency of the interior to break away 
from the coast. Massachusetts in this period witnessed a cam- 
paign between the paper money party which was entrenched in 
the more recently and thinly-settled areas of the interior and 
west, and the property-holding classes of the coast.® The 
opposition to the constitutions of 1778 and 1780 is tinctured 

5 Libby, " Distribution of the Vote on the Federal Constitution," 
Univ. of Wis. Bulletin, pp. 8, 9, and citations. Note especially " New 
Hampshire State Papers," x, pp. 228 et seq. 

« Libby, loc. cit., pp. 12-14, 46, 54-57. 



112 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

with the same antagonism between the ideas of the newer part 
of the interior and of the coastJ Shays' Rebellion and the 
anti-federal opposition of 1787-83 fomid its stronghold in the 
same interior areas. ^ 

The religious struggles continued until the democratic inte- 
rior, where dissenting sects were strong, and where there was 
antagonism to the privileges of the congregational church, 
finally secured complete disestablishment in New Hampshire, 
Connecticut, and Massachusetts. But this belongs to a later 
period.^ 

Pennsylvania affords a clear illustration of these sectional 
antagonisms. The memorial of the frontier " Paxton Boys," 
in 1764, demanded a right to share in political privileges with 
the older part of the colony, and protested against the appor- 
tionment by which the counties of Chester, Bucks, and Phila- 
delphia, together with the city of Philadelphia, elected twenty- 
six delegates, while the five frontier counties had but ten.^** 
The frontier complained against the failure of the dominant 
Quaker party of the coast to protect the interior against the 
Indians.^^ The three old wealthy counties under Quaker rule 
feared the growth of the West, therefore made few new coun- 
ties, and carefully restricted the representation in each to pre- 
serve the majority in the old section. At the same time, by a 
property qualification they met the danger of the democratic 
city population. Among the points of grievance in this colony, 

"Farrand, in Yale Review, May, 1908, p. 52 and citation. 

^Libby, loc. cit. 

» See Turner, " Rise of the New West " (Amer. Nation series, N. Y., 
1906), pp. 16-18. 

loParkman, " Pontiac " (Boston, 1851), ii, p. 352. 

11 Shepherd, '" Proprietary Government in Pennsylvania," in Columbia 
Univ. Studies, vi, pp. 546 et seq. Compare Watson, "Annals," ii, p. 
259; Green, "Provincial America" (Amer. Nation series, N. Y., 1905), 
p. 234. 



THE OLD WEST 113 

in addition to apportionment and representation, was the diffi- 
culty of access to the county seat, owing to the size of the back 
counties. Dr. Lincoln has well set forth the struggle of the 
back country, culminating in its triumph in the constitutional 
convention of 1776, which was chiefly the work of the Presby- 
terian counties.^" Indeed, therejwere two revolutions in Penn- 
sylvania, which went on side by side: one a revolt against the 
coastal property-holding classes, the old dominant Quaker 
party, and the other a revolt against Great Britain, which was 
in this colony made possible only by the triumph of the 
interior. 

In Virginia, as early as 1710, Governor Spotswood had com- 
plained that the old counties remained small while the new 
ones were sometimes ninety miles long, the inhabitants being 
obliged to travel thirty or forty miles to their own court-house. 
Some of the counties had 1,700 tithables, while others only a 
dozen miles square had 500. Justices of the peace disliked to 
ride forty or fifty miles to their monthly courts. Likewise 
there was disparity in the size of parishes — for example, that 
of Varina, on the upper James, had nine hundred tithables, 
many of whom lived fifty miles from their church. But the 
vestry refused to allow the remote parishioners to separate, 
because it would increase the parish levy of those that 
remained. He feared lest this would afford " opportunity to 
Sectarys to establish their opinions among 'em, and thereby 
shake that happy establishment of the Church of England 
which this colony enjoys with less mixture of Dissenters than 
any other of her Maj 'tie's plantations, and when once Schism 
has crept into the Church, it will soon create faction in the 
Civil Government." 

12 Lincoln, " Revolutionary Movement in Pennsylvania " (Boston, 
1901); McMaster and Stone, "Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitu- 
tion" (Lancaster, 1888). 



114 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

That Spotswood's fears were well founded, we have already 
seen. As the sectaries of the back country increased, dissat- 
isfaction with the established church grew. After the Revo- 
lution came, Jefferson, with the back country behind him, 
was able finally to destroy the establishment, and to break 
down the system of entails and primogeniture behind which 
the tobacco-planting aristocracy of the coast was entrenched. 
The desire of Jefferson to see slavery gradually abolished 
and popular education provided, is a further illustration of 
the attitude of the interior. In short, Jeffersonian democ- 
racy, with its idea of separation of church and state, its 
wish to popularize education, and its dislike for special priv- 
ilege, was deeply affected by the Western society of the Old 
Dominion. 

The Virginian reform movement, however, was unable to 
redress the grievance of unequal apportionment. In 1780 
Jefferson pointed out that the practice of allowing each county 
an equal representation in the legislature gave control to the 
numerous small counties of the tidewater, while the large popu- 
lous counties of the up-country suffered. " Thus," he wrote, 
" the 19,000 men below the falls give law to more than 30,000 
living in other parts of the state, and appoint all their chief 
officers, executive and judiciary." ^^ This led to a long strug- 
gle between coast and interior, terminated only when the slave 
population passed across the fall line, and m.ore nearly assim- 
ilated coast and up-country. In the mountain areas which did 
not undergo this change, the independent state of West Virginia 
remains as a monument of the contest. In the convention of 
1829-30, the whole philosophy of representation was discussed, 
and the coast defended its control as necessary to protect prop- 

13 ** Notes on Virginia," See his table of apportionment in Ford, 
"Writings of Thomas Jefferson," iii, p. 222. 



THE OLD WEST 115 

erty from the assaults of a numerical majority. They feared 
that the interior would tax their slaves in order to secure funds 
for internal improvements. 
As Doddridge put the case: ^* 

The principle is that the owners of slave prop- 
erty must be possessed of all the powers of govern- 
ment, however small their own numbers may be, 
to secure that property from the rapacity of an 
overgrown majority of white men. This prin- 
ciple admits of no relaxation, because the weaker 
the minority becomes, the greater will their need 
for power be according to their own doctrines. 

Leigh of Chesterfield county declared: ^^ 

It is remarkable — I mention it for the curiosity 
of the fact — that if any evil, physical or moral, 
arise in any of the states south of us, it never 
takes a northerly direction, or taints the Southern 
breeze; whereas, if any plague originate in the 
North, it is sure to spread to the South and to 
invade us sooner or later; the influenza — the 
smallpox — the varioloid — the Hessian fly — the 
Circuit Court system — Universal Suff"rage — all 
come from the North, and they always cross above 
the falls of the great rivers; below, it seems, the 
broad expanse of waters interposing, effectually 
arrests their progress. 

1*" Debates of the Virginia State Convention, 1829-1830" (Richmond, 
1854), p. 87. These debates constitute a mine of material on the diffi- 
cuhy of reconciling the political philosophy of the Revolution with the 
protection of the property, including slaves, of the lowland planters. 

15 Loc. cit., p. 407. The italics are mine. 



116 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Nothing could more clearly bring out the sense of contrast 
between upland and lowland Virginia, and the continued inti- 
macy of the bond of connection between the North and its 
Valley and Piedmont colonies, than this unconscious testimony. 

In North and South Carolina the upland South, beyond the 
pine barrens and the fall line, had similar grievances against 
the coast; but as the zone of separation was more strongly 
marked, the grievances were more acute. The tide of back- 
woods settlement flowing down the Piedmont from the north, 
had cut across the lines of local government and disarranged 
the regular course of development of the colonies from the 
seacoast.^® Under the common practice, large counties in 
North Carolina and parishes in South Carolina had been pro- 
jected into the unoccupied interior from the older settlements 
along their eastern edge. 

But the Piedmont settlers brought their own social order, 
and could not be well governed by the older planters living 
far away toward the seaboard. This may be illustrated 
by conditions in South Carolina. The general court in 
Charleston had absorbed county and precinct courts, except 
the minor jurisdiction of justices of the peace. This was well 
enough for the great planters who made their regular residence 
there for a part of each year; but it was a source of oppression 
to the up-country settlers, remote from the court. The diffi- 
culty of bringing witnesses, the delay of the law, and the 
costs all resulted in the escape of criminals as well as in the 
immunity of reckless debtors. The extortions of officials, and 
their occasional collusion with horse and cattle thieves, and 
the lack of regular administration of the law, led the South 
Carolina up-country men to take affairs in their own hands, 
and in 1764 to establish associations to administer lynch law 
under the name of " Regulators." The " Scovillites," or gov- 

16 McCrady, " South Carolina, 1719-1776," p. 623. 



THE OLD WEST 117 

ernment party, and the Regulators met in arms on the Saluda 
in 1769, but hostilities were averted and remedial measures 
passed, which alleviated the difficulty until the Revolution.^^ 
There still remained, however, the grievance of unjust legis- 
lative representation.^^ Calhoun stated the condition in these 
words: 

The upper country had no representation in the 
government and no political existence as a con- 
stituent portion of the state until a period near 
the commencement of the revolution. Indeed, dur- 
ing the revolution, and until the formation of the 
present constitution, in 1790, its political weight 
was scarcely felt in the government. Even then 
although it had become the most populous sec- 
tion, power was so distributed under the consti- 
tution as to leave it in a minority in every depart- 
ment of government. 

Even in 1794 it was claimed by the up-country leaders that 
four-fifths of the people were governed by one-fifth. Nor was 
the difficulty met until the constitutional amendment of 1808, 
the effect of which was to give the control of the senate to the 
lower section and of the house of representatives to the upper 
section, thus providing a mutual veto.^^ This South Carolina 
experience furnished the historical basis for Calhoun's argu- 
ment for nullification, and for the political philosophy under- 

17 Brevard, "Digest of S. C. Laws," i, pp. xxiv, 253; McCrady, 
"South Carolina, 1719-1776," p. 637; Schaper, "Sectionalism in South 
Carolina," in Amer. Hist. Assoc. " Report," 1900, i, pp. 334-333. 

18 Schaper, loc. cit., pp. 338, 339; Calhoun, "Works" (N. Y., 1851- 
59), i, p. 402; Columbia (S. C.) Gazette, Aug. 1, 1794; Ramsay, "South 
Carolina," pp. 64-66, 195, 217; Elliot, "Debates," iv, pp. 288, 289, 296- 
299, 305, 309, 312. 

19 Schaper, loc. cit., pp. 440-437 et seq. 



118 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

lying his theory of the " concurrent majority." "^^ This adjust- 
ment was effected, however, only after the advance of the black 
belt toward the interior had assimilated portions of the Pied- 
mont to lowland ideals. 

When we turn to North Carolina's upper country we find 
the familiar story, but with a more tragic ending. The local 
officials owed their selection to the governor and the council 
whom he appointed. Thus power was all concentrated in the 
official " ring " of the lowland area. The men of the interior 
resented the extortionate fees and the poll tax, which bore with 
unequal weight upon the poor settlers of the back country. 
This tax had been continued after sufficient funds had been 
collected to extinguish the debt for which it was originally 
levied, but venal sheriffs had failed to pay it into the treasury. 
A report of 1770 showed at least one defaulting sheriff in 
every county of the province.^^ This tax, which was almost 
the sole tax of the colony, was to be collected in specie, for 
the warehouse system, by which staples might be accepted, 
while familiar on the coast, did not apply to the interior. 
The specie was exceedingly difficult to obtain; in lack of it, 
the farmer saw the sheriff, who owed his appointment to the 
dominant lowland planters, sell the lands of the delinquent 
to his speculative friends. Lawyers and court fees follov/ed. 

In short, the interior felt that it was being exploited.-" and 
it had no redress, for the legislature was so apportioned that 

20 Turner, " Rise of the New West," pp. 50-52, 331 ; Calhoun, " Works," 
i, pp. 400-405. 

-^ " N ,C. Colon. Records," vii, pp. xiv-xvii. 

22 See Bassett, " Regulators of N. C." in Amer. Hist. Assoc. " Report," 
1894, pp. 141 (bibiiog.) et seq.; " N. C. Colon. Records," pp. vii-x 
(Saunder's introduclions are valuable); Carutiiers, "David Caldwell " 
(Greensborough, N. C, 1842); Waddell, "Colonial Officer" (Raleigh, 
1890) ; M. DeL. Hav-wood, "Governor William Tryon " (Raleigh, N. C, 
1903); Qewell, "Wachovia," chap, x; W. E. Fitch, "Some Neglected 
History of N. C." (N. Y., 1905) ; L, A. McCorkle and F. Nash, in "N. 



THE OLD WEST 119 

all power rested in the old lowland region. Efforts to secure 
paper money failed by reason of the governor's opposition 
under instructions from the crown, and the currency was con- 
tracting at the very time when population was rapidly increas- 
ing in the interior.-^ As in New England, in the days of 
Shays' Rebellion, violent prejudice existed against the judi- 
ciary and the lawyers, and it must, of course, be understood 
that the movement was not free from frontier dislike of taxa- 
tion and the restraints of law and order in general. In 1766 
and 1768, meetings were held in the upper counties to organ- 
ize the opposition, and an *' association " -* was formed, the 
members of which pledged themselves to pay no more taxes 
or fees until they satisfied themselves that these were agreeable 
to law. 

The Regulators, as they called themselves, assembled in 
the autumn of 1768 to the number of nearly four thousand, and 
tried to secure terms of adjustment. In 1770 the court-house 
at Hillsboro was broken into by a mob. The assembly passed 
some measures designed to conciliate the back country; but 
before they became operative, Governor Tryon's militia, about 
twelve hundred men, largely from the lowlands, and led by the 
gentry whose privileges were involved, met the motley army of 
the Regulators, who numbered about two thousand, in the 
battle of the Alamance (May, 1771). Many were killed and 
wounded, the Regulators dispersed, and over six thousand men 
came into camp and took the oalh of submission to the colonial 
authorities. The battle was not the first battle of the Revolu- 
tion, as it has been sometimes called, for it had little or no 

C. Booklet" (Raleigh, 1901-07), iii; Wheeler, "North Carolina," ii, pp. 
301 et seq.; Cutter, "Lynch Law," chap. ii. and iii. 

-3 Bassett, loc. cit., p. 152. 

2- Wheeler, " North Carolina," ii, pp. 301-306; " N. C. Colon. Records," 
vii, pp. 251, 699. 



120 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

relation to the stamp act; and many of the frontiersmen 
involved, later refused to fight against England because of 
the very hatred which had been inspired for the lowland Revo- 
lutionary leaders in this battle of the Alamance. The interior 
of the Carolinas was a region where neighbors, during the 
Revolution, engaged in internecine conflicts of Tories against 
Whigs. 

But in the sense that the battle of Alamance was a conflict 
against privilege, and for equality of political rights and power, 
it was indeed a preliminary battle of the Revolution, although 
fought against many of the very men who later professed 
Revolutionary doctrines in North Carolina. The need of 
recognizing the importance of the interior led to concessions 
in the convention of 1776 in that state. " Of the forty-four 
sections of the constitution, thirteen are embodiments of 
reforms sought by the Regulators." -^ But it was in this period 
that hundreds of North Carolina backwoodsmen crossed the 
mountains to Tennessee and Kentucky, many of them coming 
from the heart of the Regulator region. They used the device 
of " associations " to provide for government in their commu- 
nities.^^ 

In the matter of apportionment. North Carolina showed the 
same lodgment of power in the hands of the coast, even after 
population preponderated in the Piedmont.^^ 

It is needless to comment on the uniformity of the evidence 
which has been adduced, to show that the Old West, the inte- 
rior region from New England to Georgia, had a common 
grievance against the coast; that it was deprived throughout 
most of the region of its due share of representation, and neg- 
lected and oppressed in local government in large portions of 

25 " N. C. Colon. Records," viii, p. xix. 

26 Turner, in Amer. Hist. Revieiv, i, p. 76. 

27 " N. C. Colon. Records," vii, pp. xiv-xxiv. 



THE OLD WEST 121 

the section. The familiar struggle of West against East, of 
democracy against privileged classes, was exhibited along the 
entire line. The phenomenon must be considered as a unit, 
not in the fragments of state histories. It was a struggle of 
interior against coast. 

VI. Perhaps the most noteworthy Western activity in the 
Revolutionary era, aside from the aspects already mentioned, 
was in the part which the multitude of sects in the Old West 
played in securing the great contribution which the United 
States made to civilization by providing for complete religious 
liberty, a secular ftate with free churches. Particularly the 
Revolutionary conscitutions of Pennsylvania and Virginia, 
under the influence of the back country, insured religious free- 
dom. The eff"ects of the North Carolina upland area to secure 
a similar result were noteworthy, though for the time ineffec- 
tive.2« 

VII. As population increased in these years, the coast grad- 
ually yielded to the up-country's demands. This may be illus- 
trated by the transfer of the capitals from the lowlands to the 
fall line and Valley. In 1779, Virginia changed her seat of 
government from Williamsburg to Richmond; in 1790, South 
Carolina, from Charleston to Columbia; in 1791, North Caro- 
lina, from Edenton to Raleigh; in 1797, New York, from New 
York City to Albany; in 1799, Pennsylvania, from Philadel- 
phia to Lancaster. 

VIII. The democratic aspect of the new constitutions was 
also influenced by the frontier as well as by the prevalent Revo- 
lutionary philosophy; and the demands for paper money, stay 

28 Weeks, "Church and State in North Carolina" (Baltimore, 1893) ; 
"N. C. Colon. Records," x, p. 870; Curry, "Establishment and Dises- 
tablishment" (Phila., 1889); C. F. James, "Documentary History of 
the Struggle for Religious J^iberty in Virginia" (Lynchburg, Va., 1900) ; 
Semple, "The Virginia Baptists" (Richmond, 1810) ; Amer. Hist. Assoc. 
"Papers," ii, p. 21; iii, pp. 205, 213. 



122 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

and tender laws, etc., of this period were strongest in the inte- 
rior. It was this region that supported Shays' Rebellion; it 
was (with some important exceptions) the same area that re- 
sisted the ratification of the federal constitution, fearful of a 
stronger government and of the loss of paper money. 

IX. The interior later showed its opposition to the coast by 
the persistent contest against slavery, carried on in the up-coun- 
try of Virginia, and North and South Carolina. Until the 
decade 1830-40, it was not certain that both Virginia and 
North Carolina would not find some means of gradual aboli- 
tion. The same influence accounts for much of the exodus of 
the Piedmont pioneers into Indiana and Illinois, in the first 
half of the nineteenth century.^^ 

X. These were the regions, also, in which were developed 
the desire of the pioneers who crossed the mountains, and set- 
tled on the " Western waters," to establish new States free from 
control by the lowlands, owning their own lands, able to deter- 
mine their own currency, and in general to govern themselves 
in accordance with the ideals of the Old West. They were 
ready also, if need be, to become independent of the Old 
Thirteen. Vermont must be considered in this aspect, as well 
as Kentucky and Tennessee.^^ 

XL The land system of the Old West furnished precedents 
which developed into the land system of the trans-Alleghany 
West.^^ The squatters of Pennsylvania and the Carolinas 

29 See Ballagh, " Slavery in Virginia," Johns Hopkins Univ. " Studies," 
extra, xxiv ; Bassett, " Slavery and Servitude in the Colony of North 
Carolina," Id., xiv, pp. 169-254; Bassett, "Slavery in the State of North 
Carolina," Id., xvii; Bassett, " Antislavery Leaders in North Carolina," 
Id., xvi; Weeks, "Southern Quakers," Id., xv, extra; Schaper, "Sec- 
tionalism in South Carolina," Amer. Hist. Assoc. " Report," 1900 ; 
Turner, " Rise of the New West," pp. 54-56, 76-78, 80, 90, 150-152. 

30 See F. J. Turner, " State-Making in the West During the Revolu- 
tionary Era," in American Historical Review, i, p. 70. 

siHening, x, p. 35; "Public Acts of N. C," i, pp. 204, 306; "Revised 



THE OLD WEST 123 

found it easy to repeat the operation on another frontier. Pre- 
emption laws became established features. The Revolution 
gave opportunity to confiscate the claims of Lord Fairfax, 
Lord Granville, and McCulloh to their vast estates, as well as 
the remaining lands of the Pennsylvania proprietors. The 640 
acre (or one square mile) unit of North Carolina for pre- 
emptions, and frontier land bounties, became the area awarded 
to frontier stations by Virginia in 1779, and the " section " of 
the later federal land system. The Virginia preemption right 
of four hundred acres on the Western waters, or a thousand 
for those who came prior to 1778, was, in substance, the con- 
tinuation of a system familiar in the Old West. 

The grants to Beverley, of over a hundred thousand acres in 
the Valley, conditioned on seating a family for every thousand 
acres, and the similar grants to Borden, Carter, and Lewis, 
were followed by the great grant to the Ohio Company. This 
company, including leading Virginia planters and some fron- 
tiersmen, asked in 1749 for two hundred thousand acres on 
the upper Ohio, conditioned on seating a hundred families in 
seven years, and for an additional grant of three hundred 
thousand acres after this should be accomplished. It was pro- 
posed to settle Germans on these lands. 

The Loyal Land Company, by order of the Virginia council 
(1749), was authorized to take up eight hundred thousand 
acres west and north of the southern boundary of Virginia, on 
condition of purchasing " rights " for the amount within four 
years. The company sold many tracts for £3 per hundred 
acres to settlers, but finally lost its claim. The Mississippi 
Company, including in its membership the Lees, Washingtons, 
and other great Virginia planters, applied for two and one-half 
million acres in the West in 1769. Similar land companies 

Code of Va., 1819," ii, p. 357; Roosevelt, "Winning of the West," i, p. 
261; ii, pp. 92, 220. 



124 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

of New England origin, like the Susquehanna Company and 
Lyman's Mississippi Company, exhibit the same tendency of 
the Old West on the northern side. New England's Ohio Com- 
pany of Associates, which settled Marietta, had striking resem- 
blances to town proprietors. 

These were only the most noteworthy of many companies of 
this period, and it is evident that they were a natural outgrowth 
of speculations in the Old West. Washington, securing mili- 
tary bounty land claims of soldiers of the French and Indian 
War, and selecting lands in West Virginia until he controlled 
over seventy thousand acres for speculation, is an excellent 
illustration of the tendency. He also thought of colonizing 
German Palatines upon his lands. The formation of the 
Transylvania and Vandalia companies were natural develop- 
ments on a still vaster scale.^' 

XII. The final phase of the Old West, which I wish merely 
to mention, in conclusion, is its colonization of areas beyond the 
mountains. The essential unity of the movement is brought 
out by a study of how New England's Old West settled northern 
Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, the Adirondacks, central 
and Western New York, the Wyoming Valley (once organized 
as a part of Litchfield, Connecticut), the Ohio Company's 
region about Marietta, and Connecticut's Western Reserve on 
the shores of Lake Erie; and how the pioneers of the Great 
Valley and the Piedmont region of the South crossed the AUe- 
ghanies and settled on the Western Waters. Daniel Boone, 
going from his Pennsylvania home to the Yadkin, and from 
the Yadkin to Tennessee and Kentucky, took part in the whole 
process, and later in its continuation into Missouri.^^ The 

22Alden, " New ^ Governments West of the Alleghanies" (Madison, 
1897), gives an account of these colonies. [See the more recent work by 
C. W. Alvord, " The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, 1763-1774 " 
(1917).] 

33Thwaites, "Daniel Boone" (N. Y., 1902); [A. Henderson, "Con- 



THE OLD WEST 125 

social conditions and ideals of the Old West powerfully shaped 
those of the trans-Alleghany West. 

The important contrast between the spirit of individual col- 
onization, resentful of control, which the Southern frontiersmen 
showed, and the spirit of community colonization and control 
to which the New England pioneers inclined, left deep traces 
on the later history of the West.^* The Old West diminished 
the importance of the town as a colonizing unit, even in New 
England. In the Southern area, efforts to legislate towns into 
existence, as in Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, failed. 
They faded away before wilderness conditions. But in gen- 
eral, the Northern stream of migration was communal, and 
the Southern individual. The difference which existed between 
that portion of the Old West which was formed by the north- 
ward colonization, chiefly of the New England Plateau (includ- 
ing New York), and that portion formed by the southward 
colonization of the Virginia Valley and the Southern Piedmont 
was reflected in the history of the Middle West and the Missis- 
sippi Valley.^^ 

quest of the Old Southwest" (N. Y., 1920), brings out the important 
share of up-country men of means in promoting colonization]. 

^^ Turner, in *' Alumni Quarterly of the University of Illinois," ii, 
133-136. 

2^ [It has seemed best in this volume not to attempt to deal with the 
French frontier or the Spanish-American frontier. Besides the works 
of Parkman, a multitude of monographs have appeared in recent years 
which set the French frontier in new light; and for the Spanish fron- 
tier in both the Southwest and California much new information has 
been secured, and illuminating interpretations made by Professors 
H. E. Bolton, I. J. Cox, Chapman, Father Engelhart, and other Cali- 
fornia and Texas investigators, although the works of Hubert Howe 
Bancroft remain a useful mine of material. There was, of course, a 
contemporaneous Old West on both the French and the Spanish fron- 
tiers. The formation, approach and ultimate collision and interming- 
ling of these contrasting types of frontiers are worthy of a special study.] 



IV 

The Middle West^ 

American sectional nomenclature is still confused. Once 
" the West " described the whole region beyond the Alle- 
ghanies; but the term has hopelessly lost its definiteness. The 
rapidity of the spread of settlement has broken down old 
usage, and as yet no substitute has been generally accepted. 
The "Middle West" is a term variously used by the public, 
but for the purpose of the present paper, it will be applied 
to that region of the United States included in the census 
reports under the name of the North Central division, com- 
prising the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and 
Wisconsin (the old " Territory Northwest of the River Ohio "), 
and their trans-Mississippi sisters of the Louisiana Purchase, 
— Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dako- 
ta, and South Dakota. It is an imperial domain. If the 
greater countries of Central Europe, — France, Germany, Italy, 
and Austro-Hungary, — were laid down upon this area, the 
Middle West would still show a margin of spare territory. 
Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo constitute its gateways to the 
Eastern States; Kansas City, Omaha, St. Paul-Minneapolis, 
and Duludi-Superior dominate its western areas; Cincinnati 
and St. Louis stand on its southern borders; and Chicago 
reigns at the center. What Boston, New York, Philadelphia, 
and Baltimore are to the Atlantic seaboard these cities are to 

^ With acknowledgments to the International Monthly^ December, 
1901. 

126 



THE MIDDLE WEST 127 

the Middle West. The Great Lakes and the Mississippi, with 
the Ohio and the Missouri as laterals, constitute the vast water 
system that binds the Middle West together. It is the economic 
and political center of the Republic. At one edge is the Popu- 
lism of the prairies; at the other, the capitalism that is typi- 
fied in Pittsburgh. Great as are the local differences within 
the Middle West, it possesses, in its physiography, in the his- 
tory of its settlement, and in its economic and social life, a 
unity and interdependence which warrant a study of the area 
as an entity. Within the limits of this article, treatment of so 
vast a region, however, can at best afford no more than an 
outline sketch, in which old and well-known facts must, if 
possible, be so grouped as to explain the position of the sec- 
tion in American history. 

In spite of the difficulties of the task, there is a definite 
advantage in so large a view. By fixing our attention too 
exclusively upon the artificial boundary lines of the States, we 
have failed to perceive much that is significant in the west- 
ward development of the United States. For instance, our 
colonial system did not begin with the Spanish War; the United 
States has had a colonial history and policy from the begin- 
ning of the Republic; but they have been hidden under the 
phraseology of *' interstate migration " and " territorial organ- 
ization.'* 

The American people have occupied a spacious wilderness; 
vast physiographic provinces, each with its own peculiarities, 
have lain across the path of this migration, and each has fur- 
nished a special environment for economic and social trans- 
formation. It is possible to underestimate the importance of 
State lines, but if we direct our gaze rather to the physiogra- 
phic province than to the State area, we shall be able to see 
some facts in a new light. Then it becomes clear that these 
physiographic provinces of America are in some respects com- 



128 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

parable to the countries of Europe, and that each has its own 
history of occupation and development. General Francis A. 
Walker once remarked that " the course of settlement has called 
upon our people to occupy territory as extensive as Switzer- 
land, as England, as Italy, and latterly, as France or Ger- 
many, every ten years." It is this element of vastness in the 
achievements of American democracy that gives a peculiar 
interest to the conquest and development of the Middle West. 
The effects of this conquest and development upon the present 
United States have been of fundamental importance. 

Geographically the Middle West is almost conterminous 
■with the Provinces of the Lake and Prairie Plains; but the 
larger share of Kansas and Nebraska, and the western part of 
the two Dakotas belong to the Great Plains; the Ozark Moun- 
tains occupy a portion of Missouri, and the southern parts of 
Ohio and Indiana merge into the Alleghany Plateau. The 
relation of the Provinces of the Lake and Prairie Plains to 
the rest of the United States is an important element in the 
significance of the Middle West. On the north lies the sim- 
ilar region of Canada: the Great Lakes are in the center of the 
whole eastern and more thickly settled half of North America, 
and they bind the Canadian and Middle Western people 
together. On the south, the provinces meet the apex of that 
of the Gulf Plains, and the Mississippi unites them. To the 
west, they merge gradually into the Great Plains; the Missouri 
and its tributaries and the Pacific railroads make for them a 
bond of union; another rather effective bond is the interdepend- 
ence of the cattle of the plains and the corn of the prairies. To 
the east, the province meets the Alleghany and New England 
Plateaus, and is connected with them by the upper Ohio and by 
the line of the Erie Canal. Here the interaction of industrial 
life and the historical facts of settlement have produced a close 
relationship. The intimate connection between the larger part 



THE MIDDLE WEST 129 

of the North Central and the North Atlantic divisions of the 
United States will impress any one who examines the indus- 
trial and social maps of the census atlas. By reason of these 
interprovincial relationships, the Middle West is the mediator 
between Canada and the United States, and between the con- 
centrated wealth and manufactures of the North Atlantic States 
and the sparsely settled Western mining, cattle-raising, and 
agricultural States. It has a connection with the South that 
was once still closer, and is likely before long to reassert itself 
with new power. Within the limits of the United States, there- 
fore, we have problems of interprovincial trade and commerce 
similar to those that exist between the nations of the Old 
World. 

Over most of the Province of the Lake and Prairie Plains 
the Laurentide glacier spread its drift, rich in limestone and 
other rock powder, which farmers in less favored sections must 
purchase to replenish the soil. The alluvial deposit from 
primeval lakes contributed to fatten the soil of other parts of 
the prairies. Taken as a whole, the Prairie Plains surpass in 
fertility any other region of America or Europe, unless we 
except some territory about the Black Sea. It is a land marked 
out as the granary of the nation ; but it is more than a granary. 
On the rocky shores of Lake Superior were concealed copper 
mines rivaled only by those of Montana, and iron fields which 
now ^ furnish the ore for the production of eighty per cent of 
the pig iron of the United States. The Great Lakes afford a 
highway between these iron fields and the coal areas of the 
Ohio Valley. The gas and oil deposits of the Ohio Valley, the 
coal of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and eastern Kansas, the lead 
and zinc of the Ozark region and of the upper Mississippi 
Valley, and the gold of the black Hills, — all contribute under- 
ground wealth to the Middle West. 
2 1901. 



130 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

The primeval American forest once spread its shade over 
vast portions of the same province. Ohio, Indiana, southern 
Michigan, and central Wisconsin were almost covered with a 
growth of noble deciduous trees. In southern Illinois, along 
the broad bottom lands of the Mississippi and the Illinois, 
and in southern and southwestern Missouri, similar forests 
prevailed. To the north, in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minne- 
sota, appeared the somber white pine wilderness, interlaced 
with hard woods, which swept in ample zone along the Great 
Lakes, till the deciduous forests triumphed again, and, in their 
turn, faded into the treeless expanse of the prairies. In the 
remaining portions were openings in the midst of the forested 
area, and then the grassy ocean of prairie that rolled to west 
and northwest, until it passed beyond the line of sufficient rain- 
fall for agriculture whhout irrigation, into the semi-arid 
stretches of the Great Plains. 

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the forested region 
of this province was occupied by the wigwams of many differ- 
ent tribes of the Algonquin tongue,_ sparsely scattered in vil- 
lages along the water courses, warring and trading through 
the vast wilderness. The western edge of the prairie and the 
Great Plains were held by the Sioux, chasing herds of bison 
across these far-stretching expanses. These horsemen of the 
plains and the canoemen of the Great Lakes and the Ohio were 
factors with which civilization had to reckon, for they consti- 
tuted important portions of perhaps the fiercest native race with 
which the white man has ever battled for new lands. 

The Frenchman had done but little fighting for this region. 
He swore brotherhood with its savages, traded with them, inter- 
married with them, and explored the Middle West; but he left 
the wilderness much as he found it. Some six or seven thou- 
sand French people in all, about Detroit and Vincennes, and 
in the Illinois country, and scattered among the Indian villages 



THE MIDDLE WEST 131 

of the remote lakes and streams, held possession when George 
Washington reached the site of Pittsburgh, bearing Virginia's 
summons of eviction to France. In his person fate knocked 
at the portals of a " rising empire.' ' France hurried her com- 
manders and garrisons, with Indian allies, from the posts about 
the Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi; but it was in vain. 
In vain, too, the aftermath of Pontiac's widespread Indian 
uprising against the English occupation. When she came into 
possession of the lands between the Ohio, the Mississippi, and 
the Great Lakes, England organized them as a part of the Prov- 
ince of Quebec. The daring conquest of George Rogers Clark 
left Virginia in military possession of the Illinois country 
at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War; but over all the 
remainder of the Old Northwest, England was in control. 
Although she ceded the region by the treaty which closed the 
Revolution, she remained for many years the mistress of the 
Indians and the fur trade. When Lord Shelburne was 
upbraided in parliament for yielding the Northwest to the 
United States, the complaint was that he had clothed the 
Americans " in the warm covering of our fur trade," and his 
defense was that the peltry trade of the ceded tract was not 
sufficiently profitable to warrant further war. But the English 
government became convinced that the Indian trade demanded 
the retention of the Northwest, and she did in fact hold her 
posts there in spite of the treaty of peace. Dundas, the Eng- 
lish secretary for the colonies, expressed the policy, when he 
declared, in 1792, that the object was to interpose an Indian 
barrier between Canada and the United States; and in pur- 
suance of this policy of preserving the Northwest as an Indian 
buffer State, the Canadian authorities supported the Indians 
in their resistance to American settlement beyond the Ohio. 
The conception of the Northwest as an Indian reserve strik- 
ingly exhibits England's inability to foresee the future of the 



132 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

region, and to measure the forces of American expansion. 

By the cessions of Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, and 
Connecticut, the Old Congress had come into nominal posses- 
sion of an extensive public domain, and a field for the exer- 
cise of national authority. The significance of this fact in 
the development of national power is not likely to be overes- 
timated. The first result was the completion of the Ordinance 
of 1787, which provided a territorial government for the Old 
Northwest, with provisions for the admission of States into 
the Union. This federal colonial system guaranteed that the 
new national possessions should not be governed as dependent 
provinces, but should enter as a group of sister States into the 
federation.^ While the importance of the article excluding 
slavery has often been pointed out, it is probable that the pro- 
visions for a federal colonial organization have been at least 
equally potential in our actual development. The full sig- 
nificance of this feature of the Ordinance is only appreciated 
when we consider its continuous influence upon the American 
territorial and State policy in the westward expansion to the 
Pacific, and the political preconceptions with which Americans 
approach the problems of government in the new insular pos- 
sessions. The Land Ordinance of 1785 is also worthy of atten- 
tion in this connection, for under its provisions almost all of 
the Middle West has been divided by the government surveyor 
into rectangles of sections and townships, by whose lines the 
settler has been able easily and certainly to locate his farm, 
and the forester his " forty." In the local organization of the 
Middle West these lines have played an important part. 

It would be impossible within the limits of this paper to 
detail the history of the occupation of the Middle West; but 
the larger aspects of the flow of population into the region may 

3 See F. J. Turner, " Western State-Making in the Revolutionary 
Era," in Am. Historical Review, i, pp. 70 et seq. 



THE MIDDLE WEST 133 

be sketched. Massachusetts men had formed the Ohio Com- 
pany, and had been influential in shaping the liberal provi- 
sions of the Ordinance. Their land purchase, paid for in 
soldiers' certificates, embraced an area larger than the State 
of Rhode Island. At Marietta in 1788, under the shelter of 
Fort Harmar, their bullet-proof barge landed the first New 
England colony. A New Jersey colony was planted soon 
after at Cincinnati in the Symmes Purchase. Thus Ameri- 
can civilization crossed the Ohio. The French settlements at 
Detroit and in Indiana and Illinois belonged to other times 
and had their own ideals; but with the entrance of the Amer- 
can pioneer into the forest of the Middle West, a new era 
began. The Indians, with the moral support of England, 
resisted the invasion, and an Indian war followed. The con- 
quest of Wayne, in 1795, pushed back the Indians to the Green- 
ville line, extending irregularly across the State of Ohio from 
the site of Cleveland to Fort Recovery in the middle point of 
her present western boundary, and secured certain areas in 
Indiana. In the same period Jay's treaty provided for the 
withdrawal of the British posts. After this extension of the 
area open to the pioneer, new settlements were rapidly formed. 
Connecticut disposed of her reserved land about Lake Erie to 
companies, and in 1796 General Moses Cleaveland led the 
way to the site of the city that bears his name. This was the 
beginning of the occupation of the Western Reserve, a dis- 
trict about as large as the parent State of Connecticut, a New 
England colony in the Middle West, which has maintained, 
even to the present time, the impress of New England traits. 
Virginia and Kentucky settlers sought the Virginia Military 
Bounty Lands, and the foundation of Chillicothe here, in 1796, 
aff'orded a center for Southern settlement. The region is a 
modified extension of the limestone area of Kentucky, and 
naturally attracted the emigrants from the Blue Grass State. 



134 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Ohio's history is deeply marked by the interaction of the New 
England, Middle, and Southern colonies within her borders. 

By the opening of the nineteenth century, when Napoleon's 
cession brought to the United States the vast spaces of the 
Louisiana Purchase beyond the Mississippi, the pioneers had 
hardly more than entered the outskirts of the forest along the 
Ohio and Lake Erie. But by 1810 the government had extin- 
guished the Indian title to the unsecured portions of the West- 
ern Reserve, and to great tracts of Indiana, along the Ohio 
and up the Wabash Valley; thus protecting the Ohio high- 
way from the Indians, and opening new lands to settlement. 
The embargo had destroyed the trade of New England, and 
had weighted down her citizens with debt and taxation; cara- 
vans of Yankee emigrant wagons, precursors of the " prairie 
schooner," had already begun to cross Pennsylvania on their 
way to Ohio; and they now greatly increased in number. 
North Carolina back countrymen flocked to the Indiana settle- 
ments, giving the peculiar Hoosier flavor to the State, and 
other Southerners followed, outnumbering the Northern immi- 
grants, who sought the eastern edge of Indiana. 

Tecumthe, rendered desperate by the advance into his hunt- 
ing grounds, took up the hatchet, made wide-reaching al- 
liances among the Indians, and turned to England for pro- 
tection. The Indian war merged into the War of 1812, and 
the settlers strove in vain to add Canadian lands to their empire. 
In the diplomatic negotiations that followed the war, England 
made another attempt to erect the Old Northwest beyond the 
Greenville line into a permanent Indian barrier between Can- 
ada and the United States; but the demand was refused, and 
by the treaties of 1818, the Indians were pressed still farther 
north. In the meantime, Indian treaties had released addi- 
tional land in southern Illinois, and pioneers were widening 
the bounds of the old French settlements. Avoiding the rich 



THE MIDDLE WEST 135 

savannas of the prairie regions, as devoid of wood, remote 
from transportation facilities, and suited only to grazing, they 
entered the hard woods — and in the early twenties they were 
advancing in a wedge-shaped column up the Illinois Valley. 

The Southern element constituted the main portion of this 
phalanx of ax-bearers. Abraham Lincoln's father joined 
the throng of Kentuckians that entered the Indiana woods in 
1816, and the boy, when he had learned to hew out a forest 
home, betook himself, in 1830, to Sangamon county, Illinois. 
He represents the pioneer of the period; but his ax sank 
deeper than other men's, and the plaster cast of his great 
sinewy hand, at Washington, embodies the training of these 
frontier railsplitters, in the days when Fort Dearborn, on the 
site of Chicago, was but a military outpost in a desolate coun- 
try. While the hard woods of Illinois were being entered, the 
pioneer movement passed also into the Missouri Valley. The 
French lead miners had already opened the southeastern sec- 
tion, and Southern mountaineers had pushed up the Missouri; 
but now the planters from the Ohio Valley and the upper 
Tennessee followed, seeking the alluvial soils for slave labor. 
Moving across the southern border of free Illinois, they had 
awakened regrets in that State at the loss of so large a body 
of settlers. 

Looking at the Middle West, as a whole, in the decade from 
1810 to 1820, we perceive that settlement extended from the 
shores of Lake Erie in an arc, following the banks of the Ohio 
till it joined the Mississippi, and thence along that river and 
up the Missouri well into the center of the State. The next 
decade was marked by the increased use of the steamboat; 
pioneers pressed farther up the streams, etching out the hard 
wood forests well up to the prairie lands, and forming addi- 
tional tracts of settlement in the region tributary to Detroit 
and in the southeastern part of Michigan. In the area of the 



136 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Galena lead mines of northwestern Illinois, southwestern Wis- 
consin, and northeastern Iowa, Southerners had already begun 
operations; and if we except Ohio and Michigan, the dominant 
element in all this overflow of settlement into the Middle West 
was Southern, particularly from Kentucky, Virginia, and North 
Carolina. The settlements were still dependent on the rivers 
for transportation, and the areas between the rivers were but 
lightly occupied. The Mississippi constituted the principal 
outlet for the products of the Middle West; Pittsburgh fur- 
nished most of the supplies for the region, but New Orleans 
received its crops. The Old National road was built piecemeal, 
and too late, as a whole, to make a great artery of trade 
throughout the Middle West, in this early period; but it 
marked the northern borders of the Southern stream of popula- 
tion, running, as this did, through Columbus, Indianapolis, and 
Vandalia. 

The twenty years from 1830 to 1850 saw great changes in 
the composition of the population of the Middle West. The 
opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 was an epoch-making event. 
It furnished a new outlet and inlet for northwestern traffic; 
Buffalo began to grow, and New York City changed from a 
local market to a great commercial center. But even more 
important was the place which the canal occupied as the high- 
way for a new migration. 

In the march of the New England people from the coast, 
three movements are of especial importance: the advance from 
the seaboard up the Connecticut and Housatonic Valleys 
through Massachusetts and into Vermont; the advance thence 
to central and western New York; and the advance to the 
interior of the Old Northwest. The second of these stages 
occupied the generation from about 1790 to 1820; after that 
the second generation was ready to seek new lands; and these 
the Erie Canal and lake navigation opened to them, and to the 



THE MIDDLE WEST 137 

Vermonters and other adventurous spirits of New England. It 
was this combined New York-New England stream that in the 
thirties poured in large volume into the zone north of the 
settlements which have been described. The newcomers filled 
in the southern counties of Michigan and Wisconsin, the north- 
ern countries of Illinois, and parts of the northern and central 
areas of Indiana. Pennsylvania and Ohio sent a similar type 
of people to the area adjacent to those States. In Iowa a 
stream combined of the Southern element and of these settlers 
sought the wooded tributaries of the Mississippi in the 
southeastern part of the State. In default of legal authority, 
in this early period, they formed squatter governments and 
land associations, comparable to the action of the Massachu- 
setts men who in the first quarter of the seventeenth century 
" squatted " in the Connecticut Valley. 

A great forward movement had occurred, which took pos- 
session of oak openings and prairies, gave birth to the cities of 
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Minneapolis, as well as 
to a multitude of lesser cities, and replaced the dominance of 
the Southern element by that of a modified Puritan stock. Tlie 
railroad system of the early fifties bound the Mississippi to 
the North Atlantic seaboard; New Orleans gave way to New 
York as the outlet for the Middle West, and the day of river 
settlement was succeeded by the era of inter-river settlement 
and railway transportation. The change in the political and 
social ideals was at least equal to the change in economic con- 
nections, and together these forces made an intimate organic 
union between New England, New York, and the newly settled 
West. In estimating the New England influence in the Middle 
West, it must not be forgotten that the New York settlers were 
mainly New Englanders of a later generation. 

Combined with the streams from the East came the German 
migration into the Middle West. Over half a million, mainly 



138 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

from the Palatinate, Wiirtemberg, and the adjacent regions, 
sought America between 1830 and 1850, and nearly a million 
more Germans came in the next decade. The larger portion 
of these went into the Middle West; they became pioneers in 
the newer parts of Ohio, especially along the central ridge, 
and in Cincinnati; they took up the hardwood lands of the 
Wisconsin counties along Lake Michigan; and they came in 
important numbers to Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Mich- 
igan, and to the river towns of Iowa. The migration in the 
thirties and forties contained an exceptionally large propor- 
tion of educated and forceful leaders, men who had strug- 
gled in vain for the ideal of a liberal German nation, and 
who contributed important intellectual forces to the com- 
munities in which they settled. The Germans, as a whole, 
furnished a conservative and thrifty agricultural element to 
the Middle West. In some of their social ideals they came into 
collision with the Puritan element from New England, and the 
outcome of the steady contest has been a compromise. Of all 
the States, Wisconsin has been most deeply influenced by the 
Germans. 

By the later fifties, therefore, the control of the Middle West 
had passed to its Northern zone of population, and this zone 
included representatives of. the Middle States, New England, 
and Germany as its principal elements. The Southern people, 
north of the Ohio, differed in important respects from the 
Southerners across the river. They had sprung largely from 
the humbler classes of the South, although there were impor- 
tant exceptions. The early pioneer life, however, was ill-suited 
to the great plantations, and slavery was excluded under the 
Ordinance. Thus this Southern zone of the Middle West, 
particularly in Indiana and Illinois, constituted a mediating 
section between the South and the North. The Mississippi 
still acted as a bond of union, and up to the close of the War 



THE MIDDLE WEST 139 

of 1812 the Valley, north and south, had been fundamentally 
of the same social organization. In order to understand what 
follows, we must bear in mind the outlines of the occupation 
of the Gulf Plains. While settlement had been crossinsf the 
Ohio to the Northwest, the spread of cotton culture and negro 
slavery into the Southwest had been equally significant. What 
the New England States and New York were in the occupation 
of the Middle West, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia were 
in the occupation of the Gulf States. But, as in the case of the 
Northwest, a modification of the original stock occurred in the 
new environment. A greater energy and initiative appeared 
in the new Southern lands; the pioneer's devotion to exploit- 
ing the territory in which he was placed transferred slavery 
from the patriarchal to the commercial basis. The same 
expansive tendency seen in the Northwest revealed itself, with 
a belligerent seasoning, in the Gulf States. They had a pro- 
gram of action. Abraham Lincoln migrated from Ken- 
tucky to Indiana and to Illinois. Jefferson Davis moved from 
Kentucky to Louisiana, and thence to Mississippi, in the same 
period. Starting from the same locality, each represented the 
divergent flow of streams of settlement into contrasted environ- 
ments. The result of these antagonistic streams of migration 
to the West was a struggle between the Lake and Prairie plains- 
men, on the one side, and the Gulf plainsmen, on the other, for 
the possession of the Mississippi Valley. It was the crucial 
part of the struggle between the Northern and Southern sec- 
tions of the nation. What gave slavery and State sovereignty 
their power as issues was the fact that they involved the ques- 
tion of dominance over common territory in an expanding 
nation. The place of the Middle West in the origin and set- 
tlement of the great slavery struggle is of the highest signifi- 
cance. 

In the early history of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, a modi- 



140 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

fied form of slavery existed under a system of indenture of the 
colored servant; and the effort of Southern settlers in Indiana 
and in Illinois to reintroduce slavery are indicative of the 
importance of the pro-slavery element in the Northwest. But 
the most significant early manifestation of the rival currents 
of migration with respect to slavery is seen in the contest 
which culminated in the Missouri Compromise. The histor- 
ical obstacle of the Ordinance, as^well as natural conditions, 
gave an advantage to the anti-slavery settlers noTthwest of the 
Ohio; but when the Mississippi was crossed, and the rival 
streams of settlement mingled in the area of the Louisiana Pur- 
chase, the struggle followed. It was an Illinois man, with 
constituents in both currents of settlement, who introduced the 
Missouri Compromise, which made a modus vivendi for the 
Middle West, until the Compromise of 1350 gave to Senator 
Douglas of Illinois, in 1854, the opportunity to reopen the 
issue by his Kansas-Nebraska bill. In his doctrine of 
" squatter-sovereignty," or the right of the territories to deter- 
mine the question of slavery wdthin their bounds, Douglas 
utilized a favorite Western political idea, one which Cass of 
Michigan had promulgated before. Douglas set the love of the 
Middle West for local self-government against its preponder- 
ant antipathy to the spread of slavery. At the same time he 
brought to the support of the doctrine the Democratic party, 
which ever since the days of Andrew Jackson had voiced the 
love of the frontier for individualism and for popular power. 
In his " Young America " doctrines Douglas had also made 
himself the spokesman of Western expansive tendencies. He 
thus found important sources of popular support when he 
invoked the localism of his section. Western appeals to Con- 
gress for aid in internal improvements, protective tariffs, and 
land grants had been indications of nationalism. The doctrine 
of squatter-sovereignty itself catered to the love of national 



THE MIDDLE WEST 141 

union by presenting the appearance of a non-sectional com- 
promise, which should allow the new areas of the Middle 
West to determine their own institutions. Bui the Free Soil 
party, strongest in the regions occupied by the New York- 
New England colonists, and having for its program national 
prohibition of the spread of slavery into the territories, had 
already found in the Middle West an important center of 
power. The strength of the movement far surpassed the actual 
voting power of the Free Soil party, for it compelled both 
Whigs and Democrats to propose fusion on the basis of con- 
cession to Free Soil doctrines. The New England settlers and 
the western New York settlers, — the children of New England, 
— v.^ere keenly alive to the importance of the issue. Indeed, 
Seward, in an address at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1860, declared 
that the Northwest, in reality, extended to the base of the 
Alleghanies, and that the new States had " matured just in the 
critical moment to rally the free States of the Atlantic coast, 
to call them back to their ancient principles." 

These Free Soil forces and the nationalistic tendencies of the 
Middle West proved too strong for the opposing doctrines 
when the real struggle came. Calhoun and Taney shaped the 
issue so logically that the Middle West saw that the contest 
was not only a war for the preservation of the Union, but also 
a war for the possession of the unoccupied West, a struggle 
between the Middle West and the States of the Gulf Plains. 
The economic life of the Middle West had been bound by the 
railroad to the North Atlantic, and its interests, as well as its 
love of national unity, made it in every way hostile to secession. 
When Dr. Cutler had urged the desires of the Ohio Company 
upon Congress, in 1787, he had promised to plant in the 
Ohio Valley a colony that would stand for the Union. Vinton 
of Ohio, in arguing for the admission of Iowa, urged the posi- 
tion of the Middle West as the great unifying section of the 



142 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

country: "Disunion," he said, "is ruin to them. They have 
no alternative but to resist it whenever or wherever attempted. 
. . . Massachusetts and South Carolina might, for aught 
I know, find a dividing line that would be mutually satisfac- 
tory to them; but, Sir, they can find no such line to which 
the western country can assent." But it was Abraham Lin- 
coln who staled the issue with the greatest precision, and who 
voiced most clearly the nationalism of the Middle West, when 
he declared, " A house divided against itself cannot stand. 
I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave 
and half free." 

So it was that when the civil war in Kansas grew into the 
Civil War in the Union, after Lincoln's election to the presi- 
dency, the Middle West, dominated by its combined Puritan 
and German population, ceased to compromise, and turned 
the scale in favor of the North. The Middle West furnished 
more than one-third of the Union troops. The names of Grant 
and Sherman are sufficient testim.ony to her leadership jn the 
field. The nam.es of Lincoln and Chase show that the presi- 
dential, the financial, and the war powers were in tlie hands of 
the Middle West. If we were to accept Seward's own classi- 
fication, the conduct of foreign affairs as well belonged to 
the same section; it was, at least, in the hands of representa- 
tives of the dominant forces of the section. The Middle West, 
led by Grant and Sherman, hewed its Vv^ay down the Mississippi 
and across the Gulf States, and Lincoln could exult in 1863, 
" The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea. Thanks 
to the great Northwest for it, nor yet wholly to them." 

In thus outlining the relations of the Middle West to the 
slavery struggle, we have passed over important extensions of 
settlement in the decade before the war. In these years, not 
only did the density of settlement increase in the older por- 
tions of the region, but new waves of colonization passed 



THE MIDDLE WEST 143 

into the remoter prairies. Iowa's pioneers, after Indian ces- 
sions had been secured, spread well toward her western limits. 
Minnesota, also, was recruited by a column of pioneers. The 
irealy of Traverse de Sioux, in 1851, opened over twenty mil- 
lion acres of arable land in that State, and Minnesota increased 
her population 2730.7 per cent in the decade from 1850 to 
1860. 

Up to this decade the pine belt of the Middle West, in north- 
ern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota had been the field of 
operations of Indian traders. At first under English com- 
panies, and afterward under Aster's American Fur Company, 
the traders with their 'French and half-breed boatmen skirted 
the Great Lakes and followed the rivers into the forests, where 
they stationed their posts and spread goods and whiskey among 
the Indians. Their posts were centers of disintegration among 
the savages. The new wants and the demoralization which 
resulted from the Indian trade facilitated the purchases of 
their lands by the federal government. The trader was fol- 
lowed by the seeker for the best pine land " forties "; and by 
the time of the Civil War the exploitation of the pine belt had 
fairly begun. The Irish and Canadian choppers, followed by 
the Scandinavians, joined the forest men, and log drives suc- 
ceeded the trading canoe. Men from the pine woods of Maine 
and Vermont directed the industry, and became magnates in 
the mill towns that grew up in the forests, — millionaires, 
and afterwards political leaders. In the prairie country of 
the Middle West, the Indian trade that centered at St. Louis 
had been important ever since 1820, with an influence upon 
the Indians of the plains similar to the influence of the north- 
ern fur trade upon the Indians of the forest. By 1840 the 
removal policy had eiYected the transfer of most of the eastern 
tribes to lands across the Mississippi. Tribal names that for- 
merly belonged to Ohio and the rest of the Old Northwest 



144 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

were found on the map of the Kansas Valley. The Platte 
country belonged to the Pawnee and their neighbors, and to 
the north along the Upper Missouri were the Sioux, or Dakota, 
Crow, Cheyenne, and other horse Indians, following the 
vast herds of buffalo that grazed on tlie Great Plains. The 
discovery of California gold and the opening of the Oregon 
country, in the middle of the century, made it necessary to 
secure a road through the Indian lands for the procession 
of pioneers that crossed the prairies to the Pacific. The organ- 
ization of Kansas and Nebraska, in 1854, was the first step in 
the withdrawal of these territories from the Indians. A period 
of almost constant Indian hostility followed, for the savage 
lords of the boundless prairies instinctively felt the significance 
of the entrance of the farmer into their empire. In Minnesota 
the Sioux took advantage of the Civil War to rise; but the 
outcome was the destruction of their reservations in that State, 
and the opening of great tracts to the pioneers. When the 
Pacific railways were begun, Red Cloud, the astute Sioux 
chief, who, in some ways, stands as the successor of Pontiac 
and of Tecumthe, rallied the principal tribes of the Great 
Plains to resist the march of civilization. Their hostility 
resulted in the peace measure of 1867 and 1868, which assigned 
to the Sioux and their allies reservations embracing the major 
portion of Dakota territory, west of the Missouri River. The 
^ /stematic slaughter of millions of buffalo, in the years between 
1866 and 1873, for the sake of their hides, put an end to the 
vast herds of the Great Plains, and destroyed the economic 
foundation of the Indians. Henceforth they were- dependent 
on the whites for their food supply, and the Great Plains were 
open to the cattle ranchers. 

In a preface written in 1872 for a new edition of " The 
Oregon Trail," which had appeared in 1847, Francis Park- 
man said, " The wild cavalcade that defiled with me down 



THE MIDDLE WEST 145 

the gorges of the Black Hills, with its paint and war plumes, 
fluttering trophies and savage embroidery, bows, arrows, 
lances, and shields, will never be seen again." The prairies 
were ready for the final rush of occupation. The homestead 
law of 1862, passed in the midst of the war, did not reveal 
its full importance as an element in the settlement of the 
Middle West until after peace. It began to operate most 
actively, contemporaneously with the development of the sev- 
eral railways to the Pacific, in the two decades from 1870 to 
1890, and in connection with the marketing of the railroad 
land grants. The outcome was an epoch-making extension of 
population. 

Before 1870 the vast and fertile valley of the Red River, once 
the level bed of an ancient lake, occupying the region where 
North Dakota and Minnesota meet, was almost virgin soil. 
But in 1875 the great Dalrymple farm showed its advantages 
for wheat raising, and a tide of farm seekers turned to the 
region. The " Jim River " Valley of South Dakota attracted 
still other settlers. The Northern Pacific and the Great North- 
ern Railway thrust out laterals into these Minnesota and 
Dakota wheat areas from which to draw the nourishment for 
their daring passage to the Pacific. The Chicago, Milwaukee 
and St. Paul, the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, Burling- 
ton, and other roads, gridironed the region; and the unoccu- 
pied lands of the Middle West were taken up by a migration 
that in its system and scale is unprecedented. The railroads 
sent their agents and their literature everywhere, " booming " 
the "Golden West"; the opportunity for economic and polit- 
ical fortunes in such rapidly growing communities attracted 
multitudes of Americans whom the cheap land alone would 
not have tempted. In 1870 the Dakotas had 14,000 settlers; 
in 1890 they had over 510,000. Nebraska's population was 
28,000 in 1860; 123,000 in 1870; 452,000 in 1880; and 1,059,- 



146 THE FROiNTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

000 in 1890. Kansas had 107,000 in 1860; 364,000 in 1870; 
996,000 in 1880; and 1,427,000 in 1890. Wisconsin and New 
York gave the largest fractions of the native element to Minne- 
sota; Illinois and Ohio together sent perhaps one-third of the 
native element of Kansas and Nebraska, but the Missouri and 
Southern settlers were strongly represented in Kansas; Wis- 
consin, New York, Minnesota, and Iowa gave North Dako; i 
the most of her native settlers; and Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, 
and New York did the same for South Dakota. 

Railroads and steamships organized foreign immigration on 
scale and system never before equaled; a high-water mark of 
American immigration came in the early eighties. Germans 
and Scandinavians were rushed by emigrant trains out to the 
prairies, to fill the remaining spaces in the older States of the 
Middle West. The census of 1890 showed in Minnesota 373,- 
000 persons of Scandinavian parentage, and out of the total 
million and one-half persons of Scandinavian parentage in 
the United States, the Middle West received all but about three 
hundred thousand. The persons of German parentage in the 
Middle West numbered over four millions out of a total of 
less than seven millions in the whole country. The province 
had, in 1890, a smaller proportion of persons of foreign par- 
entage than had the North Atlantic division, but the proportions 
varied greatly in the different States. Indiana had the lowest 
percentage, 20.38; and, rising in the scale, Missouri had 
24.94; Kansas 26.75; Ohio 33.93; Nebraska 42.45; Iowa 
43.57; Illinois 49.01; Michigan 54.58; Wisconsin 73.65; 
Minnesota 75.37; and North Dakota 78.87. 

Wliat these statistics of settlement mean when translated 
into the pioneer life of the prairie, cannot be told here. There 
were sharp contrasts with the pioneer life of the Old North- 
west; for the forest shade, there was substituted the boundless 
prairie; the sod house for the log hut; the continental rail- 



THE MIDDLE WEST 147 

way for the old National Turnpike and the Erie Canal. Life 
moved faster, in larger masses, and with greater momentum in 
this pioneer movement. The horizon line was more remote. 
Things were done in the gross. The transcontinental railroad, 
the bonanza farm, the steam plow, harvester, and thresher, 
the " league-long furrow," and tlie vast cattle ranches, all 
suggested spacious combination and systematization of indus- 
try. The largest hopes were excited by these conquests of the 
prairie. The occupation of western Kansas may illustrate the 
movement which went on also in the west of Nebraska and the 
Dakotas. The pioneer farmer tried to push into the region 
with the old methods of settlement. Deceived by rainy seasons 
and the railroad advertisements, and recklessly optimistic, 
hosts of settlers poured out into the plains beyond the region 
of sufficient rainfall for successful agriculture without irriga- 
tion. Dry seasons starved them back; but a repetition of 
good rainfalls again aroused the determination to occupy 
the western plains. Boom towns flourished like prairie weeds ; 
Eastern capital struggled for a chance to share in the venture, 
and the Kansas farmers eagerly m.ortgaged their possessions to 
secure the capital so freely off'ered for their attack on the arid 
lands. By 1887 the tide of the pioneer farmers had flowed 
across t!ie semi-arid plains to the western boundary of the 
State. But it was a hopeless effort to conquer a new province 
by the forces that had won the prairies. The wave of settle- 
ment dashed itself in vain against the conditions of the Great 
Plains. The native American farm.er had received his first 
defeat; farm products at the same period had depreciated, and 
he turned to the national government for reinforcements. 

The Populistic movement of the western half of the Middle 
West is a complex of many forces. In some respects it is the 
latest manifestation of the same forces that brought on the 
crisis of 1837 in the earlier region of pioneer exploitation. 



14S THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

That era of over-confidence, reckless interaal improvements, 
and land purchases by borrowed capital, brought a reaction 
when it became apparent that the future had been over-dis- 
counted. But, in that time, there were the farther free lands 
to which the ruined pioneer could turn. The demand for an 
expansion of the currency has marked each area of Western 
advance. The greenback movement of Ohio and the eastern 
part of the Middle West grew into the fiat money, free silver, 
and land bank propositions of the Populists across the Missis- 
sippi. Efforts for cheaper transportation also appear in each 
stage of Western advance. When the pioneer left the rivers 
and had to haul his crops by wagon to a market, the trans- 
portation factor determined both his profits and the extension 
of settlement. Demands for national aid to roads and canals 
had marked the pioneer advance of the first third of the cen- 
tury. The " Granger " attacks upon the railway rates, and 
in favor of governmental regulation, marked a second advance 
of Western settlement. The Farmers' Alliance and the Popu- 
list demand for government ownership of the railroad is a 
phase of the same effort of the pioneer farmer, on his latest 
frontier. The proposals have taken increasing proportions 
in each region of Western Advance. Taken as a whole. Popu- 
lism is a manifestation of the old pioneer ideals of the native 
American, with the added element of increasing readiness to 
utilize the national government to effect its ends. This is not 
unnatural in a section whose lands were originally purchased 
by the government and given away to its settlers by the same 
authority, whose railroads were built largely by federal land 
grants, and whose settlements were protected by the United 
States army and governed by the national authority until they 
were carved into rectangular States and admitted into the 
Union. Its native settlers were drawn from many States, many 
of them former soldiers of the Civil War, who mingled in new 



THE MIDDLE WEST 149 

lands with foreign immigrants accustomed to the vigorous 
authority of European national governments. 

But these old ideals of the American pioneer, phrased in 
the new language of national power, did not meet with the 
assent of the East. Even in the Middle West a change of 
deepest import had been in progress during these years of 
prairie settlement. The agricultural preponderance of the 
country has passed to the prairies, and manufacturing has 
developed in the areas once devoted to pioneer farming. In 
the decade prior to the Civil War, the area of greatest wheat 
production passed from Ohio and the States to the east, into 
Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin; after 1880, the center of 
wheat growing moved across the Mississippi; and in 1890 the 
new settlements produced half the crop of the United States. 
The corn area shows a similar migration. In 1840 the South- 
ern States produced half the crop, and the Middle West one- 
fifth; by 1860 the situation was reversed and in 1890 nearly 
one-half the corn of the Union came from beyond the Missis- 
sippi. Thus the settlers of the Old Northwest and their crops 
have moved together across the Mississippi, and in the regions 
whence they migrated varied agriculture and manufacture 
have sprung up. 

As these movements in population and products have passed 
across the Middle West, and as the economic life of the eastern 
border has been intensified, a huge industrial organism has 
been created in the province, — an organism of tremendous 
power, activity, and unity. Fundamentally the Middle West 
is an agricultural area unequaled for its combination of space, 
variety, productiveness, and freedom from interruption by 
deserts or mountains. The huge water system of the Great 
Lakes has become the highway of a mighty commerce. The 
Sault Ste. Marie Canal, although open but two-thirds of the 
year, is the channel of a trafl&c of greater tonnage than that 



150 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

which passes through the Suez Canal, and nearly all this com- 
merce moves almost the whole length of the Great Lakes sys- 
tem; the chief ports being Duluth, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, 
and Buffalo. The transportation facilities of the Great Lakes 
were revolutionized after 1886, to supply the needs of com- 
merce between the East and the newly developed lands of the 
Middle West; the tonnage doubled; wooden ships gave way 
to steel; sailing vessels yielded to steam; and huge docks, 
derricks, and elevators, triumphs of mechanical skill, were 
constructed. A competent investigator has lately declared 
that "there is probably in the world to-day no place at tide 
water where ship plates can be laid down for a less price than 
they can be manufactured or purchased at the lake ports." 

This rapid rise of the merchant marine of our inland 
seas has led to the demand for deep water canals to connect 
them with the ocean road to Europe. When the fleets of the 
Great Lakes plow the Atlantic, and when Duluth and Chicago 
become seaports, the water transportation of the Middle West 
will have completed its evolution. The significance of the 
development of the railway systems is not inferior to that of 
the great water way. Chicago has become the greatest rail- 
road center of the world, nor is there another area of like 
size which equals this in its railroad facilities; all the forces 
of the nation intersect here. Improved terminals, steel rails, 
better rolling stock, and consolidation of railway systems 
have accompanied the advance of the people of the Middle 
West. 

This unparalleled development of transportation facilities 
measures the magnitude of the material development of the 
province. Its wheat and corn surplus supplies the deficit of 
the rest of the United States and much of that of Europe. 
Such is the agricultural condition of the province of which 
Monroe wrote to Jefferson, in 1786, in these words: "A great 



THE MIDDLE WEST 151 

part of the territory is miserably poor, especially that near 
Lakes Michigan and Erie, and that upon the Mississippi and 
the Illinois consists of extensive plains which have not had, 
from appearances, and will not have, a single bush on them 
for ages. The districts, therefore, within which these fall will 
never contain a sufficient number of inhabitants to entitle them 
to membership in the confederacy." 

Minneapolis and Duluth receive the spring wheat of the 
northern prairies, and after manufacturing great portions of 
it into flour, transmit it to Buffalo, the eastern cities, and to 
Europe. Chicago is still the great city of the corn belt, but 
its power as a milling and wheat center has been passing to 
the cities that receive tribute from the northern prairies. It 
lies in the region of winter wheat, corn, oats, and live stock. 
Kansas City, St. Louis, and Cincinnati are the sister cities of 
this zone, which reaches into the grazing country of the Great 
Plains. The meeting point of corn and cattle has led to the 
development of the packing industries, — large business sys- 
tems that send the beef and pork of the region to supply the 
East and parts of Europe. The " feeding system " adopted 
in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa, whereby the stock is fattened 
from the surplus corn of the region, constitutes a species of 
varied farming that has saved these States from the disasters 
of the failure of a single industry, and has been one solution 
of the economic life of the transition belt between the prairies 
and the Great Plains. Under a more complex agriculture, 
better adapted to the various sections of the State, and with 
better crops, Kansas has become more prosperous and less a 
center of political discontent. 

While this development of the agricultural interests of the 
Middle West has been in progress, the exploitation of the pine 
woods of tlie north has furnished anotlier contribution to the 
commerce of the province. The center of activity has migrated 



152 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

from Michigan to Minnesota, and the lumber traffic furnishes 
one of the principal contributions to the vessels that ply the 
Great Lakes and supply the tributary mills. As the white 
pine vanishes before the organized forces of exploitation, the 
remaining hard woods serve to establish factories in the former 
mill towns. The more fertile denuded lands of the north are 
now receiving settlers who repeat the old pioneer life among 
the stumps. 

But the most striking development in the industrial history 
of the Middle West in recent years has been due to the opening 
up of the iron mines of Lake Superior. Even in 1873 the 
Lake Superior ores furnished a quarter of the total production 
of American blast furnaces. The opening of the Gogebic 
mines in 1884, and the development of the Vermillion and 
Mesabi mines adjacent to the head of the lake, in the early 
nineties, completed the transfer of iron ore production to the 
Lake Superior region. Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin 
together now produce the ore for eighty per cent of the pig 
iron of the United States. Four-fifths of this great product 
moves to the ports on Lake Erie and the rest to the manufac- 
tories at Chicago and Milwaukee. The vast steel and iron 
industry that centers at Pittsburgh and Clevel-and, with impor- 
tant outposts like Chicago and Milwaukee, is the outcome of the 
meeting of the coal of the eastern and southern borders of 
tlie province and of Pennsylvania, with the iron ores of the 
north. The injdustry has been systematized and consolidated 
by a iew captains of industry. Steam shovels dig the ore 
from many of the Mesabi mines; gravity roads carry it to 
the docks and to the ships, and huge hoisting and carrying 
devices, built especially for the traffic, unload it for the rail- 
road and the furnace. Iron and coal mines, transportation 
fleets, railroad systems, and iron manufactories are concen- 
trated in a few corporations, principally the United^ States 



THE MIDDLE WEST ^ 153 

Steel Corporation. The world has never seen such a consoli- 
dation of capital and so complete a systematization of economic 
processes. 

Such is the economic appearance of the Middle West a cen- 
tury after the pioneers left the frontier village of Pittsburgh and 
crossed the Ohio into the forests. De Tocqueville exclaimed, 
with reason, in 1833: "This gradual and continuous progress 
of the European race toward the Rocky Mountains has the 
solemnity of a providential event. It is like a deluge of 
men, rising unabatedly, and driven daily onward by the hand 
of God." 

The ideals of the Middle West began in the log huts set in 
the midst of the forest a century ago. While his horizon was 
still bounded by the clearing that his ax had made, the pioneer 
dreamed of continental conquests. The vastness of the wilder- 
ness kindled his imagination. His vision saAV beyond the dank 
swamp at the edge of the great lake to the lofty buildings and 
the jostling multitudes of a mighty city; beyond the rank, 
grass-clad prairie to the seas of golden grain; beyond the 
harsh life of the log hut and the sod house to the home of his 
children, where should dwell comfort and the higher things of 
life, though they might not be for him. The men and wom.en 
vvho made the Middle West were idealists, and they had the 
power of will to make their dreams come true. Here, also, 
were the pioneer's traits, — individual activity, inventiveness, 
and competition for the prizes of the rich province that awaited 
exploitation under freedom and equality of opportunity. He 
honored the man whose eye was the quickest and whose grasp 
was the strongest in this contest: it was "every one for him- 
self." 

The early society of the Middle West was not a complex, 
highly differentiated and organized society. Almost every 
family was a self-sufficing unit, and liberty and equality flour- 



154 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

ished in the frontier periods of tlie Middle West as per^ 
haps never before in history. American democracy came from 
the forest, and its destiny drove it to material conquests; but 
the materialism of the pioneer was not the dull contented 
materialism of an old and fixed society. Both native settler 
and European immigrant saw in this free and competitive 
movement of the frontier the chance to break the bondage of 
social rank, and to rise to a higher plane of existence. The 
pioneer was passionately desirous to secure for himself and 
for his family a favorable place in the midst of these large 
and free but vanishing opportunities. It took a century for 
this society to fit itself into the conditions of the whole prov- 
ince. Little by little, nature pressed into her mold the plastic 
pioneer life. The Middle West, yesterday a pioneer province, 
is to-day the field of industrial resources and systematization 
so vast that Europe, alarmed for her industries in competi- 
tion with this new power, is discussing the policy of forming 
protective alliances among the nations of the continent. Into 
this region flowed the great forces of modern capitalism. 
Indeed, the region itself furnished favorable conditions for 
the creation of these forces, and trained many of the famous 
American industrial leaders. The Prairies, the Great Plains, 
and the Great Lakes furnished new standards of industrial 
measurement. From this society, seated amidst a wealth of 
material advantages, and breeding individualism, energetic 
competition, inventiveness, and spaciousness of design, came 
the triumph of the strongest. The captains of industry arose 
and seized on nature's gifts. Struggling with one another, 
increasing the scope of their ambitions as the largeness of the 
resources and the extent of the fields of activity revealed 
themselves, they were forced to accept the natural conditions 
of a province vast in area but simple in structure. Compe- 
tition grew into consolidation. On the Pittsburgh border of 



THE MIDDLE WEST 155 

the Middle West the completion of the process is most clearly- 
seen. On the prairies of Kansas stands the Populist, a sur- 
vival of the pioneer, striving to adjust present conditions to 
his old ideals. 

The ideals of equality, freedom of opportunity, faith in the 
common man are deep rooted in all the Middle West. The 
frontier stage, through which each portion passed, left abiding 
traces on the older, as well as on the newer, areas of the prov- 
ince. Nor were these ideals limited to the native American 
settlers: Germans and Scandinavians who poured into the 
Middle West sought the country with like hopes and like faith. 
These facts must be remembered in estimating the effects of 
the economic transformation of the province upon its democ- 
racy. The peculiar democracy of the frontier has passed 
away with the conditions that produced it; but the democratic 
aspirations rem.ain. They are held with passionate determi- 
nation. 

/ The task of the Middle West is that of adapting democ- 
racy to the vast economic organization of the present. This 
region which has so often needed the reminder that big- 
ness is not greatness, may yet show that its training has pro- 
duced the power to reconcile popular government and culture 
wath the huge industrial society of the modern world. The 
democracies of the past have been small communities, under 
simple and primitive economic conditions. At bottom the 
problem is how to reconcile real greatness with bigness. 

It is important that the Middle West should accomplish this; 
the future of the Republic is with her. Politically she is 
dominant, as is illustrated by the fact that six out of seven of 
the Presidents elected since 1860 have come from her borders. 
Twenty-six million people live in the Middle West as against 
twenty-one million in New England and the Middle States 
together, and the Middle West has indefinite capacity for 



156 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

growth. The educational forces are more democratic than 
in the East, and the Middle West has twice as many students 
(if we count together the common school, secondary, and colle- 
giate attendance), as have New England and the Middle States 
combined. Nor is this educational system, as a- whole, inferior 
to that of the Eastern States. State universities crown the 
public school system in every one of these States of the 
Middle West, and rank with the universities of the seaboard, 
while private munificence has furnished others on an unex- 
ampled scale. The public and private art collections of 
Pittsburgh, Chicago, St. Paul, and other cities rival those of 
the seaboard. " World's fairs," with their important popular 
educational influences, have been held at Chicago, Omaha, 
and Buffalo; and the next of these national gatherings is to 
be at St. Louis. There is throughout the Middle West a vigor 
and a mental activity among the common people that bode well 
for its future. If the task of reducing the Province of the 
Lake and Prairie Plains to the uses of civilization should for 
a time overweigh art and literature, and even high political 
and social ideals, it would not be surprising. But if the ideals 
of the pioneers shall survive the inundation of material suc- 
cess, we may expect to see in the Middle W^est the rise of a 
highly intelligent society where culture shall be reconciled 
with democracy in the large. 



V 

The Ohio Valley in American History^ 

In a notable essay Professor Josiah Royce has asserted the 
salutary influence of a highly organized provincial life in 
order to counteract certain evils arising from the tremendous 
development of nationalism in our own day. Among these 
evils he enumerates: first, the frequent changes of dwelling 
place, whereby the community is in danger of losing tlie 
well-knit organization of a common life; second, the tend- 
ency to reduce variety in national civilization, to assimilate 
all to a common type and thus to discourage individualily, and 
produce a "remorseless mechanism — vast, irrational;" third, 
the evils arising from the fact that waves of emotion, the pas- 
sion of the mob, tend in our day to sweep across the nation. 

Against these surges of national feeling Professor Royce 
would erect dikes in the form of provincialism, the resist- 
ance of separate sections each with its own traditions, beliefs 
and aspirations. " Our national unities have grown so vast, 
our forces of social consolidation so paramount, the result- 
ing problems, conflicts, evils, have become so intensified," 
he says, that we must seek in the province renewed strength, 
usefulness and beauty of American life. 

T^liatever may be thought of this philosopher's appeal for 
a revival of sectionalism, on a higher level, in order to check 
the tendencies to a deadening uniformity of national con- 

^ An address before the Ohio Valley Historical Association, October 
16, 1909. 

157 



158 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

solidation (and to me this appeal, under the limitations 
which he gives it, seems warranted by the conditions) — it is 
certainly true that in the history of the United States section- 
alism holds a place tco little recognized by the historians. 

By sectionalism I do not mean the struggle between North 
and South which culminated in the Civil War. Tliat extreme 
and tragic form, of sectionalism indeed has almost engrossed 
the attention of historians, and it is, no doubt, the most strik- 
ing and painful example of the phenom.enon in our history. 
But there are older, and perhaps in the long run more endur- 
ing examples of the play of sectional forces than the slavery 
struggle, and there are various sections besides North and 
South. 

Indeed, the United States is, in size and natural resources, 
an empire, a collection of potential nations, rather than a 
single nation. It is comparable in area to Europe. If the 
coast of California be placed along the coast of Spain, Charles- 
ton, South Carolina, would fall near Constantinople; the 
northern shores of Lake Superior would touch the Baltic, and 
New Orleans would lie in southern Italy. Within this vast 
empire there are geographic provinces, separate in physical 
conditions, into which Am.erican colonization has flowed, and 
in each of which a special society has developed, with an 
economic, political and social life of its own. Each of these 
provinces, or sections, has developed its own leaders, who in 
the public life of the nation have voiced the needs of their 
section, contended with the representatives of other sections, 
and arranged compromises between sections in national legis- 
lation and policy, almost as ambassadors from separate coun- 
tries in a European congress might make treaties. 

Between these sections commercial relations have sprung 
up, and economic combinations and contests may be traced 
by the student who looks beneath the surface of our national 



THE OHIO VALLEY IN AMERICAN HISTORY 159 

life to the actual grouping of States in congressional votes on 
tariff, internal improvement, currency and banking, and all 
the varied legislation in the field of commerce. American 
industrial life is the outcome of the combinations and con- 
tests of groups of States in sections. And the intellectual, the 
spiritual life of the nation is the result of the interplay of 
the sectional ideals, fundamental assumptions and emotions. 

In short, the real federal aspect of the nation, if we pene- 
trate beneath constitutional forms to the deeper currents of 
social, economic and political life, will be found to lie in the 
relation of sections and nation, rather than in the relation 
of States and nation. Recently ex-secretary Root emphasized 
the danger that the States, by neglecting to fulfil their duties, 
might fall into decay, while the national government engrossed 
their former power. But even if the States disappeared alto- 
gether as effective factors in our national life, the sections 
might, in my opinion, gain from that very disappearance a 
strength and activity that would prove effective limitations 
upon the nationalizing process. 

Without pursuing the interesting speculation, I may note 
as evidence of the development of sectionalism, the various 
gatherings of business men, religious denominations and edu- 
cational organizations in groups of States. Among the signs 
of growth of a healthy provincialism is the formation of sec- 
tional historical societies. While the American Historical 
Association has been growing vigorously and becoming a gen- 
uine gathering of historical students from all parts of the 
nation, there have also arisen societies in various sections to 
deal with the particular history of the groups of States. In 
part this is due to the great distances which render attendance 
difficult upon the meetings of the national body to-day, but 
we would be short-sighted, indeed, who failed to perceive in 
the formation of the Pacific Coast Historical Association, the 



160 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Mississippi Valley Historical Association, and the Ohio Valley 
Historical Association, for example, genuine and spontaneous 
manifestations of a sectional consciousness. 

These associations spring in large part from the recogni- 
tion in each of a common past, a common body of experi- 
ences, traditions, institutions and ideals. It is not necessary 
now to raise the question whether all of these associations are 
based on a real community of historical interest, w^hether there 
are overlapping areas, whether new combinations may not be 
made? They are at least substantial attempts to find a com- 
mon sectional unity, and out of their interest in the past of 
the section, increasing tendencies to common sectional ideas 
and policies are certain to follow. I do not mean to prophesy 
any disruptive tendency in American life by the rejuvenation 
of sectional self-consciousness; but I do mean to assert that 
American life will be enriched and safe-guarded by the devel- 
opment of the greater variety of interest, purposes and ideals 
which seem to be arising. A measure of local concentration 
seems necessary to produce healthy, intellectual and moral 
life. The spread of social forces over too vast an area makes 
for monotony and stagnation. 

Let us, then, raise the question of how far the Ohio Valley 
has had a part of its own in the making of the nation. I 
have not the temerity to attempt a history of the Valley in 
the brief compass of this address. Nor am I confident of 
my ability even to pick out the more important features of 
its history in our common national life. But I venture to put 
the problem, to state some familiar facts from the special point 
of view, with the hope of arousing interest in the theme among 
the many students who are advancing the science of history in 
this section. 

To the physiographer the section is made up of the province 
of the Alleghany Plateaus and the southern portion of the 



THE OHIO VALLEY IN AMERICAN HISTORY 161 

Prairie Plains. In it are found rich mineral deposits which 
are changing the life of the section and of the nation. 
Ahhough you reckon in your membership only the states that 
touch the Ohio River, parts of those states are, from the 
point of view of their social origins, more closely connected 
with the Northwest on the Lake Plains, than with the Ohio 
Valley; and, on the other hand, the Tennessee Valley, though 
it sweeps far toward the Lower South, and only joins the Ohio 
at the end of its course, has been through much of the his- 
tory of the region an essential part of this society. Together 
these rivers made up the " Western World " of the pioneers of 
the Revolutionary era ; the " Western Waters " of the back- 
woodsmen. 

But, after all, the unity of the section and its place in his- 
tory were determined by the " beautiful river," as the French 
explorers called it — the Ohio, which pours its flood for over 
a thousand miles, a great highway to the West; a historic 
artery of commerce, a wedge of advance between powerful 
Indian confederacies, and rival European nations, to the Mis- 
sissippi Valley; a home for six mighty States, now in the heart 
of the nation, rich in material wealth, richer in the history 
of American democracy; a society that holds a place midway 
between the industrial sections of the seaboard and the plains 
and prairies of the agricultural West; between the society that 
formed later along the levels about the Great Lakes, and the 
society that arose in the Lower South on the plains of the 
Gulf of Mexico. The Alleghanies bound it on the east, the 
Mississippi on the west. At the forks of the great river lies 
Pittsburgh, the historic gateway to the West, the present symbol 
and embodiment of the age of steel, the type of modern indus- 
trialism. Near its western border is St. Louis, looking toward 
the Prairies, the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, the 
land into which the tide of modern colonization turns. 



162 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Between these old cities, for whose sites European nations 
contended, stand the cities whose grov/th preeminently rep- 
resents the Ohio valley; Cincinnati, the historic queen of the 
river; Louisville, the warder of the falls; the cities of the 
"Old National Road," Columbus, Indianapolis; the cities of 
the Blue Grass lands, which made Kentucky the goal of the 
pioneers; and the cities of that young commonwealth, w^hom 
the Ohio river by force of its attraction tore away from an 
uncongenial control by the Old Dominion, and joined to the 
social section where it belonged. 

The Ohio Valley is, therefore, not only a commercial high- 
way, it is a middle kingdom between the East and the West, 
between the northern area, which was occupied by a greater 
New England and emigrants from northern Europe, and the 
southern area of the " Cotton Kingdom." As Pennsylvania 
and New York constituted the Middle Region in our earlier 
history, between New England and the seaboard South, so 
the Ohio Valley became the Middle Region of a later time. 
In its position as a highway and a Middle Region are found 
the keys to its place in American history. 

From the beginning the Ohio Valley seems to have been a 
highway for migration, and the home of a culture of its 
own. The sciences of American archeology and elhnology 
are too new to enable us to speak with confidence upon the 
origins and earlier distribution of the aborigines, but it is 
at least clear that the Ohio river played an important part 
in the movements of the earlier men in America, and that 
the mounds of the valley indicate a special type of develop- 
ment intermediate between that of the northern hunter folk, 
and the pueblo building races of the south. This dim and 
yet fascinating introduction to the history of the Ohio will 
afford ample opportunity for later students of the relations 



THE OHIO VALLEY IN AMERICAN HISTORY 163 

between geography and population to make contributions to 
our history. 

The French explorers saw the river, but failed to grasp its 
significance as a strategic line in the conquest of the West. 
Entangled in the water labyrinth of the vast interior, and 
kindled with aspirations to reach the " Sea of the West," their 
fur traders and explorers pushed their way through the for- 
ests of the North and across the plains of the South, from river 
to lake, from lake to river, until they met the mountains of the 
West. But while they were reaching the upper course of 
the Missouri and the Spanish outposts of Santa Fe, they missed 
the opportunity to hold the Ohio Valley, and before France 
could settle the Valley, the long and attenuated line of French 
posts in the west, reaching from Canada to Louisiana, was 
struck by the advancing column of the American backswoods- 
men in the center by the way of the Ohio. Parkman, in whose 
golden pages is written the epic of the American wilderness, 
found his hero in the wandering Frenchman. Perhaps because 
he was a New Englander he missed a great opportunity and 
neglected to portray the formation and advance of the back- 
wood society which was finally to erase the traces of French 
control in the interior of North America. 

It is not without significance in a consideration of the 
national aspects of the history of the Ohio Valley, that the 
messenger of English civilization, who sunamoned the French 
to evacuate the Valley and its approaches, and whose men 
near the forks of the Ohio fired the opening gun of the world- 
historic conflict that wrought the doom of New France in 
America, was George Washington, the first Am.erican to win 
a national position in the United States. The father of his 
country was the prophet of the Ohio Valley. 

Into this dominion, in the next scene of this drama, came 



164 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the backwoodsmen, the men who began the formation of the 
society of the Valley. I wish to consider the effects of the 
formation of this society upon the nation. And first let us 
consider the stock itself. 

The Ohio Valley was settled, for the most part (though 
with important exceptions, especially in Ohio), by men of 
the Upland South, and this determined a large part of its 
influence in the nation through a long period. As the Ohio 
Valley, as a whole, was an extension of the Upland South, so 
the Upland South was, broadly speaking, an extension from 
the old Middle Region, chiefly from Pennsylvania. The soci- 
ety of pioneers, English, Scotch-Irish, Germans, and other 
nationalities which formed in the beginning of the eighteenth 
century in the Great Valley of Pennsylvania and its lateral 
extensions was the nursery of the American backwoodsmen. 
Between about 1730 and the Revolution, successive tides of 
pioneers ascended the Shenandoah, occupied the Piedmont, 
or up-country of Virginia and the Carolinas, and received 
recruits from similar peoples who came by eastward advances 
from the coast toward this Old West. 

Thus by the middle of the eighteenth century a new sec- 
tion had been created in America, a kind of peninsula thrust 
down from Pennsylvania between the falls of the rivers of 
the South Atlantic colonies on the one side and the Alleghany 
mountains on the other. Its population showed a mixture of 
nationalities and religions. Less English than the colonial 
coast, it was built on a basis of religious feeling different 
from that of Puritan New England, and still different from the 
conservative Anglicans of the southern seaboard. The Scotch- 
Irish Presbyterians with the glow of the covenanters; German 
sectaries with serious-minded devotion to one or another of 
a multiplicity of sects, but withal deeply responsive to the 
call of the religious spirit, and the English Quakers all furnish 



THE OHIO VALLEY IN AMERICAN HISTORY 165 

a foundation of emotional responsiveness to religion and a 
readiness to find a new heaven and a new earth in politics as 
well as in religion. In spite of the influence of the backwoods 
in hampering religious organization, this upland society was 
a fertile field for tillage by such democratic and emotional 
sects as the Baptists, Methodists and the later Campbellites, 
as well as by Presbyterians. Mr. Bryce has well characterized 
the South as a region of " high religious voltage," but this 
characterization is especially applicable to the Upland South, 
and its colonies in the Ohio Valley. It is not necessary to as- 
sert that this religious spirit resuhed in the kind of conduct as- 
sociated with the religious life of the Puritans. What I wish 
to point out is the responsiveness of the Upland South to emo- 
tional religious and political appeal. 

Besides its variety of stocks and its religious sects respon- 
sive to emotion, the Upland South was intensely democratic 
and individualistic. It believed that government was based 
on a limited contract for the benefit of the individual, and 
it acted independently of governmental organs and restraints 
with such ease that in many regions this was the habitual mode 
of social procedure: voluntary cooperation was more natural 
to the Southern Uplanders than action through the machinery 
of government, especially when government checked rather 
than aided their industrial and social tendencies and desires. 
It was a naturally radical society. It was moreover a rural 
section not of the planter or merchant type, but characterized 
by the small farmer, building his log cabin in the wilderness, 
raising a small crop and a few animals for family use. It 
was this stock which began to pass into the Ohio Valley when 
Daniel Boone, and the pioneers associated with his name, 
followed the " Wilderness Trace " from the Upland South to 
the Blue Grass lands in the midst of the Kentucky hills, on the 
Ohio river. In tlie opening years of the Revolution these 



166 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

pioneers were recruited by westward extensions from Pennsyl- 
vania and West Virginia. With this colonization of the Ohio 
Valley begins a chapter in American history. 

This settlement contributed a new element to our national 
development and raised new national problems. It took a 
long time for the seaboard South to assimilate the upland sec- 
tion. We cannot think of the South as a unit through much of 
its ante-bellum history without doing violence to the facts. 
The struggle between the men of the up-country and the men 
of the tide-water, made a large part of the domestic history 
of the " Old South." Nevertheless, the Upland South, as slav- 
ery and cotton cultivation extended westward from the coast, 
gradually merged in tlie East. On the other hand, its children, 
who placed the wall of the Alleghanies between them and the 
East, gave thereby a new life to the conditions and ideals 
which were lost in their former home. Nor was this all. 
Beyond the mountains nev/ conditions, new problems, aroused 
new ambitions and new social ideals. Its entrance into the 
" Western World " was a tonic to this stock. Its crossing put 
new fire into its veins — fires of militant expansion, creative 
social energy, triumphant democracy. A new section was 
added to the American nation, a new element was infused into 
the combination which we call the United States, a new flavor 
was given to the American spirit. 

We may next rapidly note some of the results. First, let 
us consider the national effects of the settlement of this 
new social type in the Ohio Valley upon the expansion and 
diplomacy of the nation. Almost from the first the Ohio 
valley had constituted the problem of westward expansion. It 
was the entering wedge to the possession of the Mississippi 
Valley, and, although reluctantly, the Eastern colonies and 
then the Eastern States were compelled to join in the struggle 
first to possess the Ohio, then to retain it, and finally to enforce 



THE OHIO VALLEY IN AMERICAN HISTORY 167 

its demand for the possession of the whole Mississippi Valley 
and the basin of the Great Lakes as a means of outlet for its 
crops and of defense for its settlements. The part played by 
the pioneers of the Ohio Valley as a flying column of the 
nation, sent across the mountains and making a line of advance 
between hostile Indians and English on the north, and hostile 
Indians and Spaniards on the south, is itself too extensive a 
theme to be more than mentioned. 

Here in historic Kentucky, in the State which was the home 
of George Rogers Clark it is not necessary to dwell upon 
his clear insight and courage in carrying American arms 
into the Northwest. From the first, Washington also grasped 
the significance of the Ohio Valley as a " rising empire," 
whose population and trade were essential to the nation, but 
which found its natural outlet down the Mississippi, where 
Spain blocked the river, and which was in danger of withdraw- 
ing from the weak confederacy. The intrigues of England 
to attract the Valley to herself and those of Spain to add the 
setlements to the Spanish Empire, the use of the Indians by 
these rivals, and the efforts of France to use the pioneers of 
Kentucky to win New Orleans and the whole Valley between 
the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains for a revived French 
Empire in America, are among the fascinating chapters of 
American, as well as of Ohio Valley, history. This position 
of the Valley explains much of the Indian wars, the foreign 
relations, and, indirectly, the domestic politics of the period 
from the Revolution to the purchase of Louisiana. Indeed, 
the purchase was in large measure due to the pressure of 
the settlers of the Ohio Valley to secure this necessary outlet. 
It was the Ohio Valley which forced the nation away from 
a narrow colonial attitude into its career as a nation among 
other nations with an adequate physical basis for future 
growth. 



168 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

In this development of a foreign policy in connection with 
the Ohio Valley, we find the germ of the Monroe doctrine, 
and the beginnings of the definite independence of the United 
States from the state system of the Old World, the beginning, 
in fact, of its career as a world power. This expansive impulse 
went on into the War of 1812, a war which was in no inconsid- 
erable degree, the result of the aggressive leadership of a group 
of men from Kentucky and Tennessee, and especially of the 
daring and lofty demands of Henry Clay, who even thus early 
voiced the spirit of the Ohio Valley. That in this war William 
Henry Harrison and the Kentucky troops achieved the real 
conquest of the northwest province and Andrew Jackson with 
his Tennesseeans achieved the real conquest of the Gulf Plains, 
is in itself abundant evidence of the part played in the expan- 
sion of the nation by the section which formed on the Ohio 
and its tributaries. Nor was this the end of the process, for 
the annexation of Texas and the Pacific Coast was in a very 
real sense only an aftermath of the same movement of expan- 
sion. 

While the Ohio Valley was leading the way to the building 
of a greater nation, it was also the field wherein was formed 
an important contribution of the United States to political 
institutions. By this I mean what George Bancroft has well 
called " federal colonial system," that is, our system of terri- 
tories and new States. It is a mistake to attribute this sys- 
tem to the Ordinance of 1787 and to the leadership of New 
England. It was in large measure the work of the com- 
munities of the Ohio Valley who wrought out the essentials 
of the system for themselves, and by their attitude imposed 
it, of necessity, upon the nation. The great Ordinance only 
perfected the system.^ 

2 See F. J. Turner, " New States West of the AUeghanies," American 
Historical Review, i, pp. 70flF. 



THE OHIO VALLEY IN AMERICAN HISTORY 169 

Under the belief that all men going into vacant lands have 
the right to shape their own political institutions, the rifle- 
men of western Virginia, western Pennsylvania, Kentucky 
and Tennessee, during the Revolution, protested against the 
rule of governments east of the mountains, and asserted with 
manly independence their right to self-government. But it is 
significant that in making this assertion, they at the same time 
petitioned congress to admit them to the sisterhood of States. 
Even when leaders like Wilkinson were attempting to induce 
Kentucky to act as an independent nation, the national spirit 
of the people as a whole led them to delay until at last they 
found themselves a State of the new Union. This recognition 
of the paramount authority of congress and this demand for 
self-government under that authority, constitute the founda- 
tions of the federal territorial system, as expressed in congres- 
sional resolutions, worked out tentatively in Jefferson's 
Ordinance of 1784, and finally shaped in the Ordinance of 
1787. 

Thus the Ohio Valley was not only the area to which this 
system was applied, but it was itself instrumental in shaping 
the system by its own demands and by the danger that too 
rigorous an assertion of either State or national power over 
these remote communities might result in their loss to the 
nation. The importance of the result can hardly be over- 
estimated. It insured the peaceful and free development of 
the great West and gave it political organization not as the 
outcome of wars of hostile States, nor by arbitrary govern- 
ment by distant powers, but by territorial government com- 
bined with large local autonomy. These governments in turn 
were admitted as equal States of the Union. By this peace- 
ful process of colonization a whole continent has been filled 
with free and orderly commonwealths so quietly, so naturally, 
that we can only appreciate the profound significance of the 



170 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

process by contrasting it with the spread of European nations 
through conquest and oppression. 

Next let me invite your attention to the part played by 
the Ohio Valley in the economic legislation which shaped our 
history in the years of the making of the nation between 
the War of 1812 and the rise of the slavery struggle. It 
needs but slight reflection to discover that in the area in ques- 
tion, the men and measures of the Ohio Valley held the balance 
of power and set the course of our national progress. The 
problems before the country at that time were problems of 
internal development: the mode of dealing with the public 
domain; the building of roads and digging of canals for the 
internal improvement of a nation which was separated into 
East and West by the Alleghany Mountains; the formation of 
a tariff system for the protection of home industries and to 
supply a market for the surplus of the West which no longer 
found an outlet in warring Europe; the framing of a banking 
and currency system which should meet the needs of the new 
interstate commerce produced by the rise of the western sur- 
plus. 

In the Ohio Valley, by the initiative of Ohio Valley men, 
and often against the protest of Eastern sections, the public 
land policy was developed by laws which subordinated the 
revenue idea to the idea of the upbuilding of a democracy 
of small landholders. The squatters of the Ohio Valley forced 
the passage of preemption laws and these laws in their turn 
led to the homestead agitation. There has been no single 
element more influential in shaping American democracy and 
its ideals than this land policy. And whether the system be 
regarded as harmful or helpful, there can be, I think, no 
doubt that it was the outcome of conditions imposed by the 
settlers of the Ohio Valley. 

When one names the tariff, internal improvements and the 



THE OHIO VALLEY IN AMERICAN HISTORY 171 

bank, he is bound to add the title " The American System," 
and to think of Henry Clay of Kentucky, the captivating 
young statesman, who fashioned a national policy, raised 
issues and disciplined a party to support them and who finally 
imposed the system upon the nation. But, however clearly 
we recognize the genius and originality of Henry Clay as a 
political leader; however we recognize that he has a national 
standing as a constructive statesman, we must perceive, if we 
probe the matter deeply enough, that his policy and his power 
grew out of the economic and social conditions of the people 
who^ needs he voiced — the people of the Ohio Valley. It 
was the fact that in this period they had begun to create an 
agricultural surplus, which made the necessity for this legis- 
lation. 

The nation has recently celebrated the one hundredth anni- 
versary of Fulton's invention of the steamboat, and the Hud- 
son river has been ablaze in his honor; but in truth it is on 
the Ohio and the Mississippi that the fires of celebration 
should really burn in honor of Fulton, for the historic signifi- 
cance to the United States of the invention of the steamboat 
does not lie in its use on Eastern rivers; not even in its use on 
the ocean; for our own internal comm.erce carried in our own 
ships has had a vaster influence upon our national life than 
has our foreign comm.erce. And this internal commerce was 
at first, and for many years, the commerce of the Ohio Valley 
carried by way of the Mississippi. When Fulton's steamboat 
was applied in 1811 to the Western Waters, it became possible 
to develop agriculture and to get the Western crops rapidly 
and cheaply to a market. The result was a tremendous growth 
in the entire Ohio Valley, but this invention did not solve the 
problem of cheap supplies of Eastern manufactures, nor sat- 
isfy the desire of the West to build up its own factories in 
order to consume its own products. The Ohio Valley had 



172 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

seen the advantage of home markets, as her towns grew up 
with their commerce and manufacturers close to the rural 
regions. Lands had increased in value in proportion to their 
nearness to these cities, and crops were in higher demand 
near them. Thus Henry Clay found a whole section standing 
behind him when he demanded a protective tariff to create 
home markets on a national scale, and when he urged the 
breaking of the Alleghany barrier by a national system of 
roads and canals. If we analyse the congressional votes by 
which the tariff and internal improvement acts were passed, 
we shall find that there was an almost unbroken South against 
them, a Middle Region largely for them, a New England di- 
vided, and the Ohio Valley almost a unit, holding the bal- 
ance of power and casting it in favor of the American system. 

The next topic to which I ask your attention is the influence 
of the Ohio Valley in the promotion of democracy. On this 
I shall, by reason of lack of time, be obliged merely to point 
out that the powerful group of Ohio Valley States, which 
sprang out of the democracy of the backwoods, and which 
entered the Union one after the other with manhood suffrage, 
greatly recruited the effective forces of democracy in the Union. 
Not only did they add new recruits, but by their competitive 
pressure for population they forced the older States to break 
down their historic restraints upon the right of voting, unless 
they were to lose their people to the freer life of the West. 

But in the era of Jacksonian democracy, Henry Clay and 
his followers engaged the great Tennesseean in a fierce polit- 
ical struggle out of which was born the rival Whig and 
Democratic parties. This struggle was in fact reflective of 
the conditions which had arisen in the Ohio Valley. As the 
section had grown in population and wealth, as the trails 
changed into roads, the cabins into well-built houses, the 
clearings into broad farms, the hamlets into towns; as barter 



THE OHIO VALLEY IN AMERICAN HISTORY 173 

became commerce and all the modem processes of industrial 
development began to operate in this rising region, the Ohio 
Valley broke apart into the rival interests of the industrial 
forces (the town -makers and the business builders), on the 
one side and the old rural democracy of the uplands on the 
other. This division was symbolical of national processes. 
In the contest between these forces, Andrew Jackson was the 
champion of the cause of the upland democracy. He 
denounced the money power, banks and the whole credit sys- 
tem and sounded a fierce tocsin of danger against the increas- 
ing influence of wealth in politics. Henry Clay, on the other 
hand, represented the new industrial forces along the Ohio. 
It is certainly significant that in the rivalry between the great 
Whig of the Ohio Valley and the great Democrat of its Ten- 
nessee tributary lay the issues of American politics almost 
until the slavery struggle. The responsiveness of the Ohio 
Valley to leadership and its enthusiasm in action are illustrated 
by the Harrison campaign of 1840; in that "log cabin cam- 
paign " when the Whigs " stole the thunder " of pioneer Jack- 
sonian democracy for another backwoods hero, the Ohio Val- 
ley carried its spirit as well as its political favorite through- 
out the nation. 

Meanwhile, on each side of the Ohio Valley, other sections 
were forming. New England and the children of New Eng- 
land in western New York and an increasing flood of German 
immigrants were pouring into the Great Lake basin and the 
prairies, north of the upland peoples who had chopped out 
homes in the forests along the Ohio. This section was tied 
to the East by the Great Lake navigation and the Erie canal, 
it became in fact an extension of New England and New York. 
Here the Free Soil party found its strength and New York 
newspapers expressed the political ideas. Although this sec- 
tion tried to attach the Ohio River interests to itself by canals 



174 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

and later by railroads, it was in reality for a long time sepa- 
rate in its ideals and its interests and never succeeded in dom- 
inating the Ohio Valley. 

On the south along the Gulf Plains there developed the 
" Cotton Kingdom," a Greater South with a radical program 
of slavery expansion mapped out by bold and aggressive 
leaders. Already this Southern section had attempted to estab- 
lish increasing commercial relations with the Ohio Valley. 
The staple-producing region v/as a principal consumer of its 
live stock and food products. South Carolina leaders like 
Calhoun tried to bind the Ohio to the chariot of the South 
by the Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad, designed to make 
an outlet for the Ohio Valley products to the southeast. 
Georgia in her turn was a rival of South Carolina in plans 
to drain this commerce itself. In all of these plans to con- 
nect the Ohio Valley commercially with the South, the po- 
litical object v/as quite as prominent as the commercial. 

In short, various areas were bidding for the support of the 
zone of population along the Ohio River. The Ohio Valley 
recognized its old relationship to the South, but its people 
were by no means champions of slavery. In the southern por- 
tion of the States north of the Ohio where indented servitude 
for many years opened a way to a system of semi-slavery, 
there were divided counsels. Kentucky also spoke with no 
certain voice. As a result, it is in these regions that we find 
the stronghold of the compromising movement in the slavery 
struggle. Kentucky furnished Abraham Lincoln to Illinois, 
and Jefferson Davis to Mississippi, and was in reality the very 
center of the region of adjustment between these rival inter- 
ests. Senator Thomas, of southern Illinois, moved the Mis- 
souri Compromise, and Henry Clay was the most effective 
champion of that compromise, as he was the architect of the 



THE OHIO VALLEY IN AMERICAN HISTORY 175 

Compromise of 1850. The Crittenden compromise proposals 
on the eve of the Civil War came also from Kentucky and 
represent the persistence of the spirit of Henry Clay. 

In a word, as I pointed out in the beginning, the Ohio Valley 
was a Middle Region with a strong national allegiance, striv- 
ing to hold apart with either hand the sectional combatants 
in this struggle. In the cautious development of his policy 
of emancipation, we may see the profound influence of the 
Ohio Valley upon Abraham Lincoln — Kentucky's greatest 
son. No one can understand his presidency without proper 
appreciation of the deep influence of the Ohio Valley, its ideals 
and its prejudices upon America's original contribution to the 
great men of the world. 

Enough has been said to make it clear, I trust, that the Ohio 
Valley has not only a local history worthy of study, a rich 
heritage to its people, but also that it has been an independent 
and powerful force in shaping the development of a nation. 
Of the late history of this Valley, the rise of its vast industrial 
power, its far-reaching commercial influence, it is not necessary 
that I should speak. You know its statesmen and their influ- 
ence upon our own time; you know the relation of Ohio to 
the office of President of the United States! Nor is it neces- 
sary that I should attempt to prophesy concerning the future 
which the Ohio Valley will hold in the nation. 

In that new age of inland water transportation, which is 
certain to supplement the age of the railroad, there can be 
no more important region than the Ohio Valley. Let us hope 
that its old love of democracy may endure, and that in this sec- 
tion, where the first trans-Alleghany pioneers struck blows 
at the forests, there may be brought to blossom and to fruit 
the ripe civilization of a people who know that -whatever the 
glories of prosperity may be, there are greater glories of the 



176 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

spirit of man ; who know that in the ultimate record of history, 
the place of the Ohio Valley will depend upon the contribution 
which her people and her leaders make to the cause of an 
enlightened, a cultivated, a God-fearing and a free, as well as 
a comfortable, democracy. 



VI 

The Significance of the Mississippi Valley in American 

History ^ 

The rise of a company of sympathetic and critical students 
of history in the South and in the West is bound to revolution- 
ize the perspective of American history. Already our Eastern 
colleagues are aware in general, if not in detail, of the impor- 
tance of the work of this nation in dealing with the vast interior, 
and with the influence of the West upon the nation. Indeed, 
I might take as the text for this address the words of one of 
our Eastern historians, Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, who, 
a decade ago, wrote: 

The Mississippi Valley yields to no region in 
the world in interest, in romance, and in promise 
for the future. Here, if anywhere, is the real 
America — the field, the theater, and the basis of 
the civilization of the Western World. The his- 
tory of the Mississippi Valley is the history of the 
United States; its future is the future of one of the 
most powerful of modern nations.^ 

If those of us who have been insisting on the importance of 
our own region are led at times by the enthusiasm of the 
pioneer for the inviting historical domain that opens before 

1 Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association for 1909- 
10. Reprinted with the permission of the Association. 
^Harper's Magazine, February, 1900, p. 413. 

177 



178 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

us to overstate the importance of our subject, we may at least 
plead that we have gone no farther than some of our brethren 
of the East; and we may take comfort in this declaration of 
Theodore Roosevelt: 

The states that have grown up around the Great 
Lakes and in the Valley of the Upper Mississippi, 
[are] the states which are destined to be the great- 
est, the richest, the most prosperous of all the great, 
rich, and prosperous commonwealths which go to 
make up the mightiest republic the world has ever 
seen. These states . . . form the heart of the 
country geographically, and they will soon become 
the heart in population and in political and social 
importance. ... I should be sorry to think that 
before these states there loomed a future of mate- 
rial prosperity merely. I regard this section of 
the country as the heart of true American senti- 
ment.^ 

In studying the history of the whole Mississippi Valley, 
therefore, the members of this Association are studying the 
origins of that portion of the nation which is admitted by 
competent Eastern authorities to be the section potentially 
most influential in the future of America. They are also 
studying the region which has engaged the most vital activities 
of the whole nation; for the problems arising from the exist- 
ence of the Mississippi Valley, whether of movement of popu- 
lation, diplomacy, politics, economic development, or social 
structure, have been fundamental problems in shaping the 
nation. It is not a narrow, not even a local, interest which 

8 Roosevelt, " The Northwest in the Nation," in " Proceedings of the 
Wisconsin Historical Society," Fortieth Annual Meeting, p. 92. 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 179 

determines the mission of this Association. It is nothing less 
than the study of the American people in the presence and 
under the influence of the vast spaces, the imperial resources 
of the great interior. The social destiny of this Valley will 
be the social destiny, and will mark the place in history, of 
the United States. 

In a large sense, and in the one usually given to it by 
geographers and historians, the Mississippi Valley includes 
the whole interior basin, a province which drains into nearly 
two thousand miles of navigable waters of the Mississippi 
itself, two thousand miles of the tawny flood of the Missouri, 
and a thousand miles of the Ohio — five thousand miles of 
main water highways open to the steamboat, nearly two and 
a half million square miles of drainage basin, a land greater 
than all Europe except Russia, Norway, and Sweden, a land of 
levels, marked by essential geographic unity, a land estimated 
to be able to support a population of two or three hundred 
millions, three times the present population of the whole 
nation, an empire of natural resources in which to build a 
noble social structure worthy to hold its place as the heart of 
American industrial, political and spiritual life. 

The significance of the Mississippi Valley in American his- 
tory was first shown in the fact that it opened to various 
nations visions of power in the New World — visions that 
sweep across the horizon of historical possibility like the 
luminous but unsubstantial aurora of a comet's train, porten- 
tous and fleeting. 

Out of the darkness of the primitive history of the con- 
tinent are being drawn the evidences of the rise and fall of 
Indian cultures, the migrations through and into the great 
Valley by men of the Stone Age, hinted at in legends and 
languages, dimly told in the records of mounds and artifacts, 
but waiting still for complete interpretation. 



180 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Into these spaces and among the savage peoples, came 
France and wrote a romantic page in our early history, a 
page that tells of unfulfilled empire. What is striking in 
the effect of the Mississippi Valley upon France is the pro- 
nounced influence of the unity of its great spaces. It is not 
without meaning that Radisson and Groseilliers not only 
reached the extreme of Lake Superior but also, in all prob- 
ability, entered upon the waters of the Mississippi and 
learned of its western affluent; that Marquette not only received 
the Indians of the Illinois region in his post on the shores of 
Lake Superior, but traversed the length of the Mississippi 
almost to its mouth, and returning revealed the site of Chicago; 
that La Salle was inspired with the vision of a huge interior 
empire reaching from the Gulf to the Great Lakes. Before 
the close of the seventeenth century, Perrot's influence was 
supreme in the Upper Mississippi, while DTberville was lay- 
ing the foundations of Louisiana toward the mouth of the 
river. Nor is it without significance that while the Verendryes 
were advancing toward the northwest (where they discovered 
the Big Horn Mountains and revealed the natural boundaries 
of the Valley) the Mallet brothers were ascending the Platte, 
crossing the Colorado plains to Santa Fe and so revealing the 
natural boundaries toward the southwest. 

To the English the great Valley was a land beyond the 
Alleghanies. Spotswood, the far-sighted Governor of Vir- 
ginia, predecessor of frontier builders, grasped the situation 
when he proposed western settlements to prevent the French 
from becoming a great people at the back of the colonies. He 
realized the importance of the Mississippi Valley as the field 
for expansion, and the necessity to the English empire of 
dominating it, if England would remain the great power of 
the New World. 

In the war that followed between France and England, we 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 181 

now see what the men of the time could not have realized: 
that the main issue was neither the possession of the fisheries 
nor the approaches to the St. Lawrence on the one hemisphere, 
nor the possession of India on the other, but the mastery of 
the interior basin of North America. 

How little the nations realized the true meaning of the 
final victory of England is shown in the fact that Spain reluc- 
tantly received from France the cession of the lands beyond 
the Mississippi, accepting it as a means of preventing the 
infringement of her colonial monopoly in Spanish America 
rather than as a field for imperial expansion. 

But we know now that when George Washington came as 
a stripling to the camp of the French at the edge of the great 
Valley and demanded the relinquishment of the French posts 
in the name of Virginia, he was demanding in the name of 
the English speaking people the right to occupy and rule the 
real center of American resources and power. When Brad- 
dock's axmen cut their road from the Potomac toward the 
forks of the Ohio they were opening a channel through which 
the forces of civilization should flow with ever increasing 
momentum and " carving a cross on the wilderness rim " at 
the spot which is now the center of industrial power of the 
American nation. 

England trembled on the brink of her great conquest, fear- 
ful of the effect of these far-stretching rivers upon her colonial 
system, timorous in the presence of the fierce peoples who 
held the vast domain beyond the Alleghanies. It seems clear, 
however, that the Proclamation of 1763, forbidding settlement 
and the patenting of lands beyond the Alleghanies, was not 
intended as a permanent creation of an Indian reservation out 
of this Valley, but was rather a temporary arrangement in 
order that British plans might mature and a system of grad- 
ual colonization be devised. Already our greatest leaders. 



182 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

men like Washington and Franklin, had been quick to see 
the importance of this new area for enlarged activities of the 
American people. A sudden revelation that it was the West, 
rather than the ocean, which was the real theater for the crea- 
tive energy of America came with the triumph over France. 
The Ohio Company and the Loyal Land Company indicate 
the interest at the outbreak of the war, while the Mississippi 
Company, headed by the Washingtons and Lees, organized to 
occupy southern Illinois, Indiana, and western Kentucky, 
mark the Virginia interest in the Mississippi Valley, and 
Franklin's activity in promoting a colony in the Illinois coun- 
try illustrates the interest of the Philadelphians. Indeed, 
Franklin saw clearly the possibilities of a settlement there as 
a means of breaking up Spanish America. Writing to his 
son in 1767 he declared that a " settlement should be made in 
the Illinois country . . . raising a strength there which on 
occasions of a future war might easily be poured down the 
Mississippi upon the lower country and into the Bay of Mex- 
ico to be used against Cuba, the French Islands, or Mexico 
itself." * 

The Mississippi Valley had been the despair of France in 
the matter of governmental control. The coureurs de bois 
escaping from restraints of law and order took their way 
through its extensive wilderness, exploring and trading as they 
listed. Similarly, when the English colonists crossed the 
Alleghanies they escaped from the control of mother colonies 
as well as of the mother country. If the Mississippi Valley 
revealed to the statesmen of the East, in the exultation of the 
w^ar with France, an opportunity for new empire building, it 
revealed to the frontiersmen, who penetrated the passes of the 
Alleghanies, and entered into their new inheritance, the sharp 
distinctions between them and the Eastern lands which they 

♦"Franklin's Works," iv, p. 141. 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 183 

left behind. From the beginning it was clear that the lands 
beyond the Alleghanies furnished an opportunity and an incen- 
tive to develop American society on independent and uncon- 
ventional lines. The " men of the Western Waters " broke 
with the old order of things, subordinated social restraint to 
the freedom of the individual, won their title to the rich lands 
which they entered by hard fighting against the Indians, hotly 
challenged the right of the East to rule them, demanded their 
own States, and would not be refused, spoke with contempt of 
the old social order of ranks and classes in the lands between 
the Alleghanies and the Atlantic, and proclaimed the ideal of 
democracy for the vast country which they had entered. Not 
with the mercurial facility of the French did they follow the 
river systems of the Great Valley. Like the advance of the 
glacier they changed the face of the country in their steady and 
inevitable progress, and they sought the sea. It was not long 
before the Spaniards at the mouth of the river realized the 
meaning of the new forces that had entered the Valley. 
In 1794 the Governor of Louisiana wrote: 

This vast and restless population progressively 
driving the Indian tribes before them and upon 
us, seek to possess themselves of all the extensive 
regions which the Indians occupy between the Ohio 
and Mississippi rivers, the Gulf of Mexico, and 
the Appalachian Mountains, thus becoming our 
neighbors, at the same time that they menacingly 
ask for the free navigation of the Mississippi. 
If they achieve their object, their ambitions would 
not be confined to this side of the Mississippi. 
Their writings, public papers, and speeches, all 
* turn on this point, the free navigation of the Gulf 
bv the rivers . . . which empty into it, the rich 



184 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

fur trade of the Missouri, and in time the posses- 
sion of the rich mines of the interior provinces 
^ of the very Kingdom of Mexico. Their mode of 
growth and their policy are as formidable for 
Spain as their armies. . . . Their roving spirit 
and the readiness with which they procure suste- 
nance and shelter facilitate rapid settlement. A 
rifle and a little corn meal in a bag are enough 
for an American wandering alone in the woods for 
a month. . . . With logs crossed upon one another 
he makes a house, and even an impregnable fort 
against the Indians. . . . Cold does not terrify 
him, and when a family wearies of one place, it 
moves to another and settles there with the same 
ease. 

If such men come to occupy the banks of the 
Mississippi and Missouri, or secure their navi- 
gation, doubtless nothing will prevent them from 
crossing and penetrating into our provinces on the 
other side, which, being to a great extent unoccu- 
pied, can oppose no resistance. ... In my opin- 
ion, a general revolution in America threatens 
Spain unless the remedy be applied promptly. 

In fact, the pioneers who had occupied the uplands of the 
South, the backwoods stock with its Scotch-Irish leaders which 
had formed on the eastern edge of the Alleghanies, separate 
and distinct from the type of tidewater and New England, 
had found in the Mississippi Valley a new field for expansion 
under conditions of free land and unrestraint. These condi- 
tions gave it promise of ample time to work out its own social 
type. But, first of all, these men who were occupying the 
Western Waters must find an outlet for their surplus products. 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 185 

if they were to become a powerful people. While the Alle- 
ghanies placed a veto toward the east, the Mississippi opened 
a broad highway to the south. Its swift current took their flat 
boats in its strong arms to bear them to the sea, but across the 
outlet of the great river Spain drew the barrier of her colonial 
monopoly and denied them exit. 

The significance of the Mississippi Valley in American his- 
tory at the opening of the new republic, therefore, lay in the 
fact that, beyond the area of the social and political control 
of the thirteen colonies, there had arisen a new and aggressive 
society which imperiously put the questions of the public 
lands, internal communication, local self-government, defense, 
and aggressive expansion, before the legislators of the old 
colonial regime. The men of the Mississippi Valley com- 
pelled the men of the East to think in American terms instead 
of European. They dragged a reluctant nation on in a new 
course. 

From the Revolution to the end of the War of 1812 Europe 
regarded the destiny of the Mississippi Valley as undetermined. 
Spain desired to maintain her hold by means of the control 
given through the possession of the mouth of the river and 
the Gulf, by her influence upon the Indian tribes, and by 
intrigues with the settlers. Her object was primarily to safe- 
guard the Spanish American monopoly which had made her 
a great nation in the world. Instinctively she seemed to sur- 
mise that out of this Valley were the issues of her future; 
here was the lever which might break successively, from her 
empire fragments about the Gulf — Louisiana, Florida and 
Texas, Cuba and Porto Rico — the Southwest and Pacific 
coast, and even the Philippines and the Isthmian Canal, while 
the American republic, building itself on the resources of the 
Valley, should become paramount over the independent repub- 
lics into which her empire was to disintegrate. 



186 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

France, seeking to regain her former colonial power, would 
use the Mississippi Valley as a means of provisioning her 
West Indian islands; of dominating Spanish America, and 
of subordinating to her purposes the feeble United States, 
which her policy assigned to tlie lands between the Atlantic 
and the Alleghanies. The ancient Bourbon monarchy, the 
revolutionary republic, and the Napoleonic empire — all con- 
templated the acquisition of the whole Valley of the Missis- 
sippi from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains.^ 

England holding the Great Lakes, dominating the northern 
Indian populations and threatening the Gulf and the mouth 
of tlie Mississippi by her fleet, watched during the Revolution, 
the Confederation, and the early republic for the breaking 
of the fragile bonds of the thirteen States, ready to extend 
her protection over the settlers in the Mississippi Valley. 

Alarmed by the prospect of England's taking Louisiana and 
Florida from Spain, Jeff"erson wrote in 1790: "Embraced 
from St. Croix to St. Mary's on one side by their possessions, 
on the other by their fleet, we need not hesitate to say that 
they would soon find means to unite to them all the territory 
covered by the ramifications of the Mississippi." And that, 
he thought, must result in " bloody and eternal war or indis- 
soluble confederacy " with England. 

None of these nations deemed it impossible that American 
settlers in the Mississippi Valley might be won to accept 
another flag than that of the United States. Gardoqui had 
the effrontery in 1787 to suggest to Madison that the Kentuck- 
ians w^ould make good Spanish subjects. France enlisted the 
support of frontiersmen led by George Rogers Clark for her 
attempted conquest of Louisiana in 1793. England tried to 
win support among the western settlers. Indeed, when we 
recall that George Rogers Clark accepted a commission as 

5 [See the author's paper in American Historical Review, x, p. 245.] 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 187 

Major General from France in 1793 and again in 1798; that 
Wilkinson, afterwards commander-in-chief of the American 
army, secretly asked Spanish citizenship and promised renun- 
ciation of his American allegiance; that Governor Sevier of 
Franklin, afterwards Senator from Tennessee and its first Gov- 
ernor as a State, Robertson the founder of Cumberland, and 
Blount, Governor of the Southwest Territory and afterwards 
Senator from Tennessee, were all willing to accept the rule of 
another nation sooner than see the navigation of the Mississippi 
yielded by the American government we can easily believe that 
it lay within the realm of possibility that another allegiance 
might have been accepted by the frontiersmen themselves. We 
may well trust Rufus Putnam, whose federalism and devotion 
to his country had been proved and whose work in founding 
New England's settlement at Marietta is well known, when he 
wrote in 1790 in answer to Fisher Ames's question whether 
the Mississippi Valley could be retained in the Union: 
" Should Congress give up her claim to the navigation of the 
Mississippi or cede it to the Spaniards, I believe the people in 
the Western quarter would separate themselves from the 
United States very soon. Such a measure, I have no doubt, 
would excite so much rage and dissatisfaction that the people 
would sooner put themselves under the despotic government of 
Spain than remain the indented servants of Congress." He 
added that if Congress did not afford due protection also to 
these western settlers they might turn to England or Spain.® 

Prior to the railroad the Mississippi Valley was potentially 
the basis for an independent empire, in spite of the fact that 
its population would inevitably be drawn from the Eastern 
States. Its natural outlet was down the current to the Gulf. 
New Orleans controlled the Valley, in the words of Wilkinson, 
" as the key the lock, or the citadel the outworks." So long 

•Cmler's "Cutler," ii, p. 372. 



188 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

as the Mississippi Valley was menaced, or in part controlled, by 
rival European states, just so long must the United States be 
a part of the state system of Europe, involved in its fortunes. 
And particularly was this the case in view of the fact that 
until the Union made internal commerce, based upon the Mis- 
sissippi Valley, its dominant economic interest, the merchants 
and sailors of the northeastern States and the staple producers 
of the southern sea-board were a commercial appanage of 
Europe. The significance of the Mississippi Valley was 
clearly seen by Jefferson. V/riting to Livingston in 1802 he 
declared: 

There is on the globe one single spot, the pos- 
sessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. 
It is New Orleans, through wh.ch the produce of 
three-eights of our territory must pass to market, 
and from its fertility it will ere long yield more 
than half of our whole produce and contain more 
than half of our inhabitants. . . . The day that 
France takes possession of New Orleans fixes the 
sentence which is to restrain her within her low- 
water mark. It seals the union of two nations 
who in conjunction can maintain exclusive pos- 
session of the ocean. From that moment we must 
marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation 
. . . holding the two continents of America in 
sequestration for the common purposes of the 
united British and American nations.''' 

The acquisition of Louisiana was a recognition of the essen- 
tial unity of the Mississippi Valley. The French engineer 
Collot reported to his government after an investigation in 
1796: 

7 " Jefferson's Works," iv, p. 431, 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 189 

All the positions on the left [east] bank of the 
Mississippi . . . without the alliance of the West- 
ern states are far from covering Louisiana. . . . 
When two nations possess, one the coasts and the 
other the plains, the former must inevitably embark 
or submit. From thence I conclude that the West- 
ern States of the North American republic must 
unite themselves with Louisiana and form in the 
future one single compact nation; or else that 
colony to whatever power it shall belong will be 
conquered or devoured. 

The effect of bringing political unity to the Mississippi 
Vcilley by the Louisiana Purchase was profound. It was the 
decisive step of the United States on an independent career 
as a world power, free from entangling foreign alliances. 
The victories of Harrison in the Northwest, in the War of 
1812 that followed, ensured our expansion in the northern 
half of the Valley. Jackson's triumphal march to the Gulf 
and his defense of New Orleans in the sam.e war won the basis 
for that Cotton Kingdom, so important in the economic life 
of the nation and so pregnant with the issue of slavery.^ The 
acquisition of Florida, Texas, and the Far West followed natu- 
rally. Not only was the nation set on an independent path 
in foreign relations; its political system was revolutionized, 
for the Mississippi Valley now opened the way for adding 
State after State, swamping the New England section and its 
Federalism. The doctrine of strict construction had received 
a fatal blow at the hands of its own prophet. The old con- 
ception of historic sovereign States, makers of a federation, 

8 [See on the Cotton Kingdom, U. B. Phillips, "History of Slavery"; 
W. G. Brown, "Lower South"; W. E. Dodd, "Expansion and Conflict"; 
F. J. Turner, "New West."] 



190 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

was shattered by this vast addition of raw material for an 
indefinite number of parallelograms called States, nursed 
through a Territorial period by the Federal government, 
admitted under conditions, and animated by national rather 
than by State patriotism. 

The area of the nation had been so enlarged and the devel- 
opment of the internal resources so promoted, by the acqui- 
sition of the whole course of the mighty river, its tributaries 
and its outlet, that the Atlantic coast soon turned its economic 
energies from the sea to the interior. Cities and sections 
began to struggle for ascendancy over its industrial life. A 
real national activity, a genuine American culture began. The 
vast spaces, the huge natural resources, of the Valley demanded 
exploitation and population. Later there came the tide of 
foreign immigration which has risen so steadily that it has 
made a composite American people whose amalgamation is 
destined to produce a new national stock. 

But without attempting to exhaust, or even to indicate, all 
the effects of the Louisiana Purchase, I wish next to ask your 
attention to the significance of the Mississippi Valley in the 
promotion of democracy and the transfer of the political center 
of gravity in the nation. The Mississippi Valley has been 
the especial home of democracy. Born of free land and the 
pioneer spirit, nurtured in the ideas of the Revolution and find- 
ing free play for these ideas in the freedom of the wilder- 
ness, democracy showed itself in the earliest utterances of the 
men of the Western Waters and. it has persisted there. The 
demand for local self-government, which was insistent on the 
frontier, and the endorsement given by the Alleghanies to 
these demands led to the creation of a system of independent 
Western governments and to the Ordinance of 1787, an orig- 
inal contribution to colonial policy. This was framed in the 
period when any rigorous subjection of the West to Eastern rule 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 191 

would have endangered the ties that bound them to the Union 
itself. In the Consti-utional Convention prominent Eastern 
statesmen expressed their fears of the Western democracy and 
would have checked its ability to out-vote the regions of prop- 
erty by limiting its political power, so that it should never 
equal that of the Atlantic coast. But more liberal counsels 
prevailed. In the first debates upon the public lands, also, 
it was clearly stated that the social system of the nation was 
involved quite as much as the question of revenue. Eastern 
fears that cheap lands in abundance would depopulate the 
Atlantic States and check their industrial growth by a scarcity 
of labor supply were met by the answer of one of the repre- 
sentatives in 1796: 

I question if any man would be hardy enough 
to point out a class of citizens by name that ought 
to be the servants of the community ; yet unless that 
is done to what class of the People could you direct 
such a law? But if you passed such an act [lim- 
iting the area offered for sale in the Mississippi 
Valley], it would be tantamount to saying that 
there is some class which must remain here, and by 
law be obliged to serve the others for such wages 
as they please to give. 

Gallatin showed his comprehension df the basis of the 
prosperous American democracy in the same debate when he 
said: 

If the cause of the happiness of this country was 
examined into, it would be found to arise as much 
from the great plenty of land in proportion to the 
inhabitants, which their citizens enjoyed as from 
the wisdom of their political institutions. 



192 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Out of this frontier democratic society where the freedom 
and abundance of land in the great Valley opened a refuge 
to the oppressed in all regions, came the Jacksonian democ- 
racy which governed the nation after the downfall of the party 
of John Quincy Adams. Its center rested in Tennessee, the 
region from which so large a portion of the Mississippi Val- 
ley was settled by descendants of the m.en of the Upland South. 
The rule of the Mississippi Valley is seen when we recall the 
place that Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri held in both 
parties. Besides Jackson, Clay, Harrison and Polk, we count 
such presidential candidates as Hugh White and John Bell, 
Vice President R. M. Johnson, Grundy, the chairm.aii of the 
finance committee, and Benton, the champion of western radi- 
calism. 

It was in this same period, and largely by reason of the 
drainage of population to the West, and the stir in the air 
raised by the Western winds of Jacksonian democracy, that 
most of the older States reconstructed their constitutions on a 
more democratic basis. From the Mississippi Valley where 
there were liberal suffrage provisions (based on population 
alone instead of property and population), disregard of 
vested interests, and insistence on the rights of man, came the 
inspiration for this era of change in the franchise and appor- 
tionment, of reform of laws for imprisonment for debt, of 
general attacks upon monopoly and privilege. " It is now 
plain," wrote Jackson in 1837, " that the war is to be carried 
on by the monied aristocracy of the few against the democ- 
racy of numbers; the [prosperous] to make the honest laborers 
hewers of wood and drawers of water . . . through the credit 
and paper system." 

By this time the Mississippi Valley had grown in popula- 
tion and political power so that it ranked with the older sec- 
tions. The next indication of its significance in American 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 193 

history which I shall mention is its position in shaping the 
economic and political course of the nation between the close 
of the War of 1812 and the slavery struggle. In 1790 the 
Mississippi Valley had a population of about a hundred thou- 
sand, or one-fortieth of that of the United States as a whole; 
by 1810 it had over a million, or one-seventh; by 1830 it had 
three and two-thirds millions, or over one-fourth; by 1840 over 
six millions, more than one-third. Wliile the Atlantic coast 
increased only a million and a half souls between 1830 and 
1840, the Mississippi Valley gained nearly three millions. 
Ohio (virgin wilderness in 1790) was, half a century later, 
nearly as populous as Pennsylvania and twice as populous as 
Massachusetts. While Virginia, North Carolina, and South 
Carolina were gaining 60,000 souls between 1830 and 1840, 
Illinois gained 318,000. Indeed, the growth of this State 
alone excelled that of the entire South Atlantic States. 

These figures show the significance of the Mississippi Valley 
in its pressure upon the older section by the competition of its 
cheap lands, its abundant harvests, and its drainage of the 
labor supply. All of these things meant an upward lift to 
the Eastern wage earner. But they meant also an increase of 
political power in the Valley. Before the War of 1812 the 
Mississippi Valley had six senators. New England ten, the 
Middle States ten, and the South eight. By 1840 the Missis- 
sippi Valley had twenty-two senators, double those of the 
Middle States and New England combined, and nearly three 
times as many as the Old South; while in the House of Repre- 
sentatives the Mississippi Valley outweighed any one of the 
old sections. In 1810 it had less than one-third the power 
of New England and the South together in the House. In 
1840 it outweighed them both combined and because of its spe- 
cial circumstances it held the balance of power. 

While the Mississippi Valley thus rose to superior political 



194 THE FROiNTIER IN A]MERICAN HISTORY 

power as compared with any of the old sections, its economic 
development made it the inciting factor in the industrial life 
of the nation. After the War of 1812 the steamboat revolu- 
tionized the transportation facilities of the Mississippi Valley. 
In each economic area a surplus formed, demanding an outlet 
and demanding returns in manufactures. The spread of cot- 
ton into the lower Mississippi Valley and the Gulf Plains had 
a double significance. This transfer of the center of cotton 
production away from the Atlantic South not only brought 
increasing hardship and increasing unrest to the East as the 
competition of the virgin soils depressed Atlantic land values 
and made Eastern labor increasingly dear, but the price of 
cotton fell also in due proportion to the increase in produc- 
tion by the Mississippi Valley. While the transfer of eco- 
nomic power from the Seaboard South to the Cotton Kingdom 
of the lower Mississippi Valley was in progress, the upper 
Mississippi Valley was leaping forward, partly under the 
stimulus of a market for its surplus in the plantations of the 
South, where almost exclusive cultivation of the great staples 
resulted in a lack of foodstuffs and livestock. 

At the same time the great river and its affluents became 
the highway of a commerce that reached to the West Indies, 
the Atlantic Coast, Europe, and South America. The Missis- 
sippi Valley was an industrial entity, from Pittsburgh and Santa 
Fe to New Orleans. It became the most important influence 
in American politics and industry. Washington had declared 
in 1784 that it was the part of wisdom for Virginia to bind 
the West to the East by ties of interest through internal 
improvement thereby taking advantage of the extensive and 
valuable trade of a rising empire. 

This realization of the fact that an economic empire was 
growing up beyond the mountains stimulated rival cities, New 
York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, to engage in a struggle 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 195 

to supply the West with goods and receive its products. This 
resuhed in an attempt to break down the barrier of the Alle- 
ghanies by internal improvements. The movement became 
especially active after the War of 1812, when New York car- 
ried out De Witt Clinton's vast conception of making by the 
Erie Canal a greater Hudson which should drain to the port 
of New York all the basin of the Great Lakes, and by means 
of other canals even divert the traffic from the tributaries of 
the Mississippi. New York City's commercial ascendancy 
dates from this connection with interior New York and the 
Mississippi Valley. A writer in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine 
in 1869 makes the significance of this clearer by these words: 

There was a period in the history of the seaboard 
cities when there was no West; and when the Alle- 
ghany Mountains formed the frontier of settle- 
ment and agricultural production. During that 
epoch the seaboard cities. North and South, grew 
in proportion to the extent and fertility of the 
country in their rear; and as Maryland, Virginia, 
the Carolinas and Georgia were more productive 
in staples valuable to commerce than the colonies 
north of them, the cities of Baltimore, Norfolk, 
Charleston, and Savannah enjoyed a greater trade 
and experienced a larger growth than those on the 
northern seaboard. 

He, then, classifies the periods of city development into 
three: (1) the provincial, limited to the Atlantic seaboard; 
(2) that of canal and turnpike connected with the Mississippi 
Valley; and (3) that of railroad connection. Thus he was 
able to show how Norfolk, for example, was shut off from 
the enriching currents of interior trade and was outstripped 



196 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

by New York. The efforts of Philadelphia, Baltimore, 
Charleston, and Savannah to divert the trade of the Mississippi 
system to their own ports on the Atlantic, and the rise or fall 
of these cities in proportion as they succeeded are a sufficient 
indication of the meaning of the Mississippi Valley in Amer- 
ican industrial life. Wliat colonial empire has been for Lon- 
don that the Mississippi Valley is to the seaboard cities of the 
United States, awakening visions of industrial empire, system- 
atic control of vast spaces, producing the American type of 
the captain of industry. 

It was not alone city rivalry that converged upon the Mis- 
sissippi Valley and sought its alliance. Sectional rivalry 
likewise saw that the balance of power possessed by the inte- 
rior furnished an opportunity for combinations. This was a 
fundamental feature of Calhoun's policy when he urged the 
seaboard South to complete a railroad system to tap the 
Northwest. As Washington had hoped to make western trade 
seek its outlet in Virginia and build up the industrial power 
of the Old Dominion by enriching intercourse with the Missis- 
sippi Valley, as Monroe wished to bind the West to Virginia's 
political interests; and as De Witt Clinton vv^ished to attach 
it to New York, so Calhoun and Hayne would make " Georgia 
and Carolina the commiercial center of the Union, and the 
two most powerful and influential members of the confed- 
eracy," by draining the Mississippi Valley to their ports. " I 
believe," said Calhoun, " that the success of a connection of 
the West is of the last im.portance to us politically and com- 
mercially. ... I do verily believe that Charleston has more 
advantages in her position for the Western trade, than any 
city on the Atlantic, but to develop them we ought to look 
to the Tennessee instead of the Ohio, and much farther to the 
West than Cincinnati or Lexington." 

This was the secret of Calhoun's advocacy in 1836 and 1837 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 197 

both of the distribution of the surplus revenue and of the ces- 
sion of the public lands to the States in which they lay, as an 
inducement to the West to ally itself with Southern policies; 
and it is the key to the readiness of Calhoun, even after he 
lost his nationalism, to promote internal improvements which 
would foster the southward current of trade on the Mississippi. 

Without going into details, I may simply call your atten- 
tion to the fact that Clay's whole system of internal improve- 
ments and tariff was based upon the place of the Mississippi 
Valley in American life. It was the upper part of the Val- 
ley, and especially the Ohio Valley, that furnished the votes 
which carried the tariffs of 1816, 1824, and 1828. Its inter- 
ests profoundly influenced the details of those tariffs and its 
need of internal improvement constituted a basis for sectional 
bargaining in all the constructive legislation after the War 
of 1812. New England, the Middle Region, and the South each 
sought alliance with the growing section beyond the moun- 
tains. American legislation bears the enduring evidence of 
these alliances. Even the National Bank found in this Valley 
the main sphere of its business. The nation had turned its 
energies to internal exploitation, and sections contended for 
the economic and political power derived from connection 
with the interior. 

But already the Mississippi Valley w^as beginning to stratify, 
both socially and geographically. As the railroads pushed 
across the mountains, the tide of New England and New York 
colonists and German immigrants sought the basin of the 
Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi. A distinct zone, 
industrially and socially connected with New England, was 
forming. The railroad reinforced the Erie Canal and, as 
De Bow put it, turned back the tide of the Father of Waters 
so that its outlet was in New York instead of New Orleans for 
a large part of the Valley. Below the Northern zone was the 



193 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

border zone of the Upland South, the region of compromise, 
including both banks of the Ohio and the Missouri and reach- 
ing down to the hills on the north of the Gulf Plains. The 
Cotton Kingdom based on slavery found its center in the fer- 
tile soils along the Lower Mississippi and the black prairies 
of Georgia and Alabama, and was settled largely by planters 
from the old cotton lands of the Atlantic States. The Missis- 
sippi Valley had rejuvenated slavery, had given it an aggres- 
sive tone characteristic of Western life. 

Thus the Valley found itself in the midst of the slavery 
struggle at the very time when its own society had lost homo- 
geneity. Let us allow two leaders, one of the South and one 
of the North, to describe the situation; and, first, let the 
South speak. Said Hammond, of South Carolina,® in a speech 
in the Senate on March 4, 1858: 

I think it not improper that I should attempt 
to bring the North and South face to face, and 
see what resources each of us might have in the 
contingency of separate organizations. 

Through the heart of our country runs the great 
Mississippi, the father of waters, into whose bosom 
are poured thirty-six thousand miles of tributary 
streams; and beyond we have the desert prairie 
wastes to protect us in our rear. Can you hem 
in such a territory as that? You talk of putting 
up a wall of fire around eight hundred and fifty 
thousand miles so situated! How absurd. 

But in this territory lies the great valley of the 
Mississippi, now the real and soon to be the 
acknowledged seat of the empire of the world. 
The sv/ay of that valley will be as great as ever 

^ ** Congressional Globe," 35th Congress, First Session, Appendix, p. 70. 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 199 

the Nile knew in the earlier ages of mankind. 
We own the most of it. The most valuable part 
of it belongs to us now; and although those who 
have settled above us are now opposed to us, 
another generation will tell a different tale. They 
are ours by all the laws of nature; slave labor 
will go to every foot of this great valley where it 
will be found profitable to use it, and some of 
those who may not use it are soon to be united 
with us by such ties as will make us one and insep- 
arable. The iron horse will soon be clattering 
over the sunny plains of the South to bear the 
products of its upper tributaries to our Atlantic 
ports, as it now does through the ice-bound North. 
There is the great Mississippi, bond of union made 
by nature herself. She will maintain it forever. 

As the Seaboard South had transferred the mantle of leader- 
ship to Tennessee and then to the Cotton Kingdom of the 
Lower Mississippi, so New England and New York resigned 
their command to the northern half of the Mississippi Valley 
and the basin of the Great Lakes. Seward, the old-time leader 
of the Eastern Whigs who had just lost the Republican nom- 
ination for the presidency to Lincoln, may rightfully speak 
for the Northeast. In the fall of 1860, addressing an audience 
at Madison, Wisconsin, he declared : ^° 

The empire established at Washington is of less 
than a hundred years' formation. It was the empire 
of thirteen Atlantic states. Still, practically, the 
mission of that empire is fulfilled. The power 
that directs it is ready to pass away from those 

10 "Seward's Works" (Boston, 1884), iv, p. 319. 



200 THE FRONTIER liN AMERICAN HISTORY 

thirteen states, and although held and exercised 
under the same constitution and national form of 
government, yet it is now in the very act of being 
transferred from the thirteen states east of the 
Alleghany mountains and on the coast of the 
Atlantic ocean, to the twenty states that lie west 
of the Alleghanies, and stretch away from their 
base to the base of the Rocky mountains on the 
West, and you are the heirs to it. When the next 
census shall reveal your power, you will be found 
to be the masters of the United States of Amer- 
ica, and through ihem the dominating political 
power of the world. 

Appealing to the Northwest on the slavery issue Seward 
declared : 

The whole responsibility rests henceforth direct- 
ly or indirectly on the people of the Northwest. 
... There can be no virtue in commercial and 
manufacturing communities to maintain a democ- 
racy, when the democracy themselves do not want 
a democracy. There is no virtue in Pearl street, 
in Wall street, in Court street, in Chestnut street, 
in any other street of great commercial cities, that 
can save the great democratic government of ours, 
when you cease to uphold it with your intelligent 
votes, your strong and mighty hands. You must, 
therefore, lead us as we heretofore reserved and 
prepared the way for you. We resign to you the 
banner of human rights and human liberty, on this 
continent, and we bid you be firm, bold and onward 
and then you may hope that we will be able to fol- 
low you. 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 201 

When we survey the course of the slavery struggle in the 
United States it is clear that the form the question took was 
clue to the Mississippi Valley. The Ordinance of 1787, the 
Missouri Compromise, the Texas question, the Free Soil agi- 
tation, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska bill, 
the Dred Scott decision, " bleeding Kansas " — these are all 
Mississippi Valley questions, and the mere enumeration makes 
it plain that it was the Mississippi Valley as an area for 
expansion which gave the slavery issue its significance in 
American history. But for this field of expansion, slavery 
might have fulfilled the expectation of the fathers and grad- 
ually died away. 

Of the significance of the Mississippi Valley in the Civil 
War, it is unnecessary that I should speak. Illinois gave to 
the North its President; Mississippi gave to the South its 
President. Lincoln and Davis were both born in Kentucky. 
Grant and Sherman, the northern generals, came from the 
Mississippi Valley; and both of them believed that when Vicks- 
burg fell the cau:e of the South was lost, and so it must 
have been if the Confederacy had been unable, after victories 
in the East, to regain the Father of Waters; for, as General 
Sherman said: "Whatever power holds that river can jgov- 
ern this continent." 

With the close of the war political power passed for many 
years to the northern half of the Mississippi Valley, as the 
names of Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley 
indicate. The population of the Valley grew from about 
fifteen millions in 1860 to over forty millions in 1900 — over 
half the total population of the United States. The signifi- 
cance of its industrial growth is not likely to be overestimated 
or overlooked. On its northern border, from near Minnesota's 
boundary line, through the Great Lakes to Pittsburgh, on its 
eastern edge, runs a huge movement of iron from mine to 



202 HIE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

factory. This industry is basal in American life, and it has 
revolutionized tlie industry of the world. The United States 
produces pig iron and steel in amount equal to her two great- 
est competitors combined, and the iron ores for this product 
are chiefly in the Mississippi Valley. It is the chief producer 
of coal, thereby enabling the United States almost to equal 
the combined production of Germany and Great Britain; and 
great oil fields of the nation are in its midst. Its huge crops 
of wheat and corn and its cattle are the main resources 
for the United States and are drawn upon by Europe. Its 
cotton furnishes two-thirds of the world's factory supply. Its 
railroad system constitutes the greatest transportation net- 
work in the world. Again it is seeking industrial consolida- 
tion by demanding improvement of its vast water system as a 
unit. If this design, favored by Roosevelt, shall at some 
time be accomplished, again the bulk of the commerce of the 
Valley may flow along the old routes to New Orleans; and to 
Galveston by the development of southern railroad outlets 
after the building of the Panama Canal. For the develop- 
ment and exploitation of these and of the transportation and 
trade interests of the Middle West, Eastern capital has been 
consolidated into huge corporations, trusts, and combinations. 
With the influx of capital, and the rise of cities and manufac- 
tures, portions of the Mississippi Valley have become assim- 
ilated with the East. With the end of the era of free lands the 
basis of its democratic society is passing away. 

The final topic on which I shall briefly comment in this dis- 
cussion of the significance of the Mississippi Valley in Amer- 
ican history is a corollary of this condition. Has the Missis- 
sippi Valley a permanent contribution to make to American 
society, or is it to be adjusted into a type characteristically 
Eastern and European? In other words, has the United States 
itself an original contribution to make to the history of society? 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 203 

This is what it comes to. The most significant fact in the 
Mississippi Valley is its ideals. Here has been developed, not 
by revolutionary theory, but by growth among free oppor- 
tunities, the conception of a vast democracy made up of mobile 
ascending individuals, conscious of their power and their 
responsibilities. Can these ideals of individualism and democ- 
racy be reconciled and applied to the twentieth century type 
of civilization? 

Other nations have been rich and prosperous and powerful, 
art-loving and empire-building. No other nation on a vast 
scale has been controlled by a self-conscious, self-restrained 
democracy in the interests of progress and freedom, industrial 
as well as political. It is in the vast and level spacer of the 
Mississippi Valley, if anywhere, that the forces of social 
transformation and the modification of its democratic ideals 
may be arrested. 

Beginning with competitive individualism, as well as with 
belief in equality, the farmers of the Mississippi Valley grad- 
ually learned that unrestrained competition and combination 
meant the triumph of the strongest, the seizure in the interest 
of a dominant class of the strategic points of the nation's life. 
They learned that between the ideal of individualism, unre- 
strained by society, and the ideal of democracy, was an innate 
conflict; that their very ambitions and forcefulness had endan- 
gered their democracy. The significance of the Mississippi 
Valley in American history has lain partly in the fact that it 
was a region of revolt. Here have arisen varied, sometimes 
ill-considered, but always devoted, movements for ameliorat- 
ing the lot of the common man in the interests of democracy. 
Out of the Mississippi Valley have come successive and related 
tidal waves of popular demand for real or imagined legisla- 
tive safeguards to their rights and their social ideals. The 
Granger movement, ihe Greenback movement, the Populist 



204 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

movement, Bryan Democracy, and Roosevelt Republicanism 
all found their greatest strength in the Mississippi Valley. 
They were Mississippi Valley ideals in action. Its people 
were learning by experiment and experience how to grapple 
with the fundamental problem of creating a just social order 
that shall sustain the free, progressive, individual in a real 
democracy. The Mississippi Valley is asking, " What shall it 
profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own 
soul? " 

The Mississippi Valley has furnished a new social order to 
America. Its universities have set new types of institutions 
for social service and for the elevation of the plain people. 
Its historians should recount its old ambitions, and inventory 
its ideals, as well as its resources, for the information of the 
present age, to the end that building on its past, the mighty 
Valley m,ay have a significance in the life of the nation even 
more profound than any which I have recounted. 



VII 

The Problem of the West^ 

The problem of the West is nothing less than the problem 
of American development. A glance at the map of the United 
States reveals the truth. To write of a "Western sectional- 
ism," bounded on the east by the Alleghanies, is, in itself, to 
proclaim the writer a provincial. What is the West? What 
has it been in American life? To have the answers to these 
questions, is to understand the most significant features of 
the United States of to-day. 

The West, at bottom, is a form of society, rather than an ' 
area. It is the term applied to the region whose social con- j 
ditions result from the application of older institutions and f 
ideas to the transforming influences of free land. By this 
application, a new environment is suddenly entered, freedom 
of opportunity is opened, the cake of custom is broken, and 
new activities, new lines of growth, new institutions and new 
ideals, are brought into existence. The wilderness disappears, 
the " West " proper passes on to a new frontier, and in the 
former area, a new society has emerged from its contact with 
the backwoods. Gradually this society loses its primitive con- 
ditions, and assimilates itself to the type of the older social 
conditions of the East; but it bears within it enduring and dis- 
tinguishing survivals of its frontier experience. Decade after 
decade. West after West, this rebirth of American society has 
gone on, has left its traces behind it, and has reacted on the 
East. The history of our political institutions, our democ- 
racy, is not a history of imitation, of simple borrowing; it is 

''■Atlantic Monthly, September, 1896. Reprinted by penaiswon. 

20S 



206 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

a history of the evolution and adaptation of organs in response 
to changed environment, a history of the origin of new polit- 
ical species. In this sense, therefore, the West has been a 
constructive force of the highest significance in our life. To 
use the words of that acute and widely informed observer, Mr. 
Bryce, " The West is the most American part of America. 
. . . What Europe is to Asia, what America is to England, 
that the Western States and Territories are to the Atlantic 
States." 

The West, as a phase of social organization, began with the 
Atlantic coast, and passed across the continent. But the colo- 
nial tide-water area was in close touch with the Old World, 
and soon lost its Western aspects. In the middle of the eigh- 
teenth century, the newer social conditions appeared along 
the upper waters of the tributaries of the Atlantic. Here it 
was that the West took on its distinguishing features, and trans- 
mitted frontier traits and ideals to this area in later days. 
On the coast, were the fishermen and skippers, the merchants 
and planters, with eyes turned toward Europe. Beyond the 
falls of the rivers were the pioneer farmers, largely of non- 
English stock, Scotch-Irish and German. They constituted a 
ditinct people, and may be regarded as an expansion of the 
social and economic life of the middle region into the back 
country of the South. These frontiersmen were the ancestors 
of Boone, Andrew Jackson, Calhoun, Clay, and Lincoln. 
Washington and Jefferson were profoundly affected by these 
frontier conditions. The forest clearings have been the seed 
plots of American character. 

In the Revolutionary days, the settlers crossed the Alle- 
ghanies and put a barrier between them and the coast. They 
became,' to use their phrases, " the men of the Western waters," 
the heirs of the " Western world. " In this era, the backwoods- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE WEST 207 

men, all along the western slopes of the mountains, with a 
keen sense of the difference between them and the dwellers on 
the coast, demanded organization into independent States of 
the Union. Self-government was their ideal. Said one of 
their rude, but energetic petitions for statehood: "Some of 
our fellow-citizens may think we are not able to conduct our 
affairs and consult our interests; but if our society is rude, 
much wisdom is not necessary to supply our wants, and a 
fool can sometimes put on his clothes better than a wise man 
can do it for him." This forest philosophy is the philosophy 
of American democracy. But the men of the coast were not 
ready to admit its implications. They apportioned the State 
legislatures so that the property-holding minority of the tide- 
water lands were able to outvote the more populous back coun- 
tries. A similar system was proposed by Federalists in the 
constitutional convention of 1787. Gouverneur Morris, argu- 
ing in favor of basing representation on property as well as 
numbers, declared that " he looked forward, also, to that range 
of new States which would soon be formed in the West. He 
thought the rule of representation ought to be so fixed, as to 
secure to the Atlantic States a prevalence in the national coun- 
cils." " The new States," said he, " will know less of the pub- 
lic interest than these; will have an interest in many respects 
different; in particular will be little scrupulous of involving 
the community in wars, the burdens and operations of which 
would fall chiefly on the maritime States. Provision ought, 
therefore, to be made to prevent the maritime States from 
being hereafter outvoted by them." He added that the West- 
ern country "would not be able to furnish men equally 
enlightened to share in the administration of our common 
interests. The busy haunts of men, not the remote wilderness, 
was the proper school of political talents. If the Western 
people get power into their hands, they will ruin the Atlantic 



208 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

interest. The back members are always most averse to the 
best measures." Add to these utterances of Gouverneur Morris 
the impassioned protest of Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, in 
the debates in the House of Representatives, on the admission 
of Louisiana. Referring to the discussion over the slave votes 
and the West in the constitutional convention, he declared, 
*' Suppose, then, that it had been distinctly foreseen that, in 
addition to the effect of this weight, the whole population of a 
world beyond the Mississippi was to be brought into this and 
the other branch of the legislature, to form our laws, control 
our rights, and decide our destiny. Sir, can it be pretended 
that the patriots of that day would for one moment have 
listened to it? . . . They had not taken degrees at the hospital 
of idiocy. . . . Why, sir, I have already heard of six States, 
and some say there will be, at no great distant time, more. I 
have also heard that the m.outh of the Ohio will be far to the 
east of the center of the contemplated empire. . . . You have 
no authority to throw the rights and property of this people 
into ' hotch-pot ' with the wild men on the Missouri, nor with 
the mixed, though more respectable, race of Anglo-Hispano- 
Gallo-Americans who bask on the sands in the mouth of the 
Mississippi. ... Do you suppose the people of the Northern 
and Atlantic States will, or ought to, look on with patience 
and see Representatives and Senators from the Red River and 
Missouri, pouring themselves upon this and the other floor, 
managing the concerns of a seaboard fifteen hundred miles, at 
least, from their residence; and having a preponderancy in 
councils into which, constitutionally, they could never have 
been admitted? " 

Like an echo from the fears expressed by the East at the 
close of the eighteenth century come the words of an eminent 
Eastern man of letters ^ at the end of the nineteenth century, in 

2 Charles Eliot Norton. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE WEST 209 

warning against the West: "Materialized in their temper; with 
few ideals of an ennobling sort; little instructed in the lessons 
of history; safe from exposure to the direct calamities and 
physical horrors of war; with undeveloped imaginations and 
sympathies — they form a community unfortunate and dan- 
gerous from the possession of power without a due sense of 
its corresponding responsibilities; a community in which the 
passion for war may easily be excited as the fancied means by 
which its greatness may be convincingly exhibited, and its 
ambitions gratified. . . . Some chance spark may fire the 
prairie." 

Here, then, is the problem of the West, as it looked to New 
England leaders of thought in the beginning and at the end 
of this century. From the first, it was recognized that a new 
type was growing up beyond the seaboard, and that the time 
would come when the destiny of the nation would be in 
Western hands. The divergence of these societies became 
clear in the struggle oyer the ratification of the federal constitu- 
tion. The up-country agricultural regions, the communities 
that were in debt and desired paper money, with some Western 
exceptions, opposed the instrument; but the areas of intercourse 
and property carried the day. 

It is important to understand, therefore, what v^^ere some 
of the ideals of this early Western democracy. How did the 
frontiersman differ from the man of the coast? 

'j The most obvious fact regarding the man of the Western 
Waters is that he had placed himself under influences destruc- 
tive to many of the gains of civilization. Remote from the 
opportunity for systematic education, substituting a log hut 
in the forest-clearing for the social comforts of the town, he 
suffered hardships and privations, and reverted in many ways 
to primitive conditions of life. Engaged in a struggle to sub- 
due the forest, working as an individual, and with little specie 



210 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

or capital, his interests were with the debtor class. At each 
stage of its advance, the West has favored an expansion of 
the currency. The pioneer had boundless confidence in the 
future of his own community, and when seasons of financial 
contraction and depression occurred, he, who had staked his 
all on confidence in Western development, and had fought the 
savage for his home, was inclined to reproach the conservative 
sections and classes. To explain this antagonism requires 
more than denunciation of dishonesty, ignorance, and boorish- 
ness as fundamental Western traits. Legislation in the United 
States has had to deal with two distinct social conditions. In 
some portions of the country there was, and is, an aggregation 
of property, and vested rights are in the foreground: in others, 
capital is lacking, more primitive conditions prevail, with 
different economic and social ideals, and the contentment of 
the average individual is placed in the foreground. That in 
the conflict between these two ideals an even hand has always 
been held by the government would be difficult to show. 

The separation of the Western man from the seaboard, and 
his environment, made him in a large degree free from Euro- 
pean precedents and forces. He looked at things independ- 
ently and with small regard or appreciation for the best Old 
World experience. He had no ideal of a philosophical, eclec- 
tic nation, that should advance civilization by " intercourse 
with foreigners and familiarity with their point of view, and 
readiness to adopt whatever is best and most suitable in their 
ideas, manners, and customs." His was rather the ideal of 
conserving and developing what was original and valuable 
in this new country. The entrance of old society upon free 
lands meant to him opportunity ipr a new type of democracy 
and new popular ideals. The West was not conservative: 
buoyant self-confidence and self-assertion were distinguishing 
traits in its tomposition. It saw in its growth nothing less 



THE PROBLEM OF THE WEST 211 

than a new order of society and state. In this conception 
were elements of evil and elements of good. 

But the fundamental fact in regard to this new society was 
its relation to land. Professor Boutmy has said of the United 
States, " Their one primary and predominant object is to cul- 
tivate and settle these prairies, forests, and vast waste lands. 
The striking and peculiar characteristic of American society is 
that it is not so much a democracy as a huge commercial com- 
pany for the discovery, cultivation, and capitalization of its 
enormous territory. The United States are primarily a com- 
mercial society, and only secondarily a nation.' j Of course, 
this involves a serious misapprehension. By the very fact of 
the task here set forth, far-reaching ideals of the state and of 
society have been evolved in the West, accompanied by loyalty 
to the nation representative of these ideals. But M. Boutmy's 
description hits the substantial fact, that the fundamental 
traits of the man of the interior were due to the free lands of 
the West. These turned his attention to the great task of sub- 
duing them to the purposes of civilization, and to the task of 
advancing his economic and social status in the new democ- 
racy which he was helping to create. Art, literature, refine- 
ment, scientific administration, all had to give way to this 
Titanic labor. Energy, incessant activity, became the lot of 
this new American. Says a traveler of the time of Andrew 
Jackson, " America is like a vast workshop, over the door of ^^ 
which is printed in blazing characters, ' No admittance here, * 
except on business.' " The West of our own day reminds Mr. 
Bryce " of the crowd which Vathek found in the hall of Eblis, 
each darting hither and thither with swift steps and unquiet 
mien, driven to and fro by a fire in the heart. Time seems too 
short for what they have to do, and the result always to come 
short of their desire." 

But free lands and the consciousness of working out their 



212 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

social destiny did more than turn the Westerner to material 
interests and devote him to a restless existence. They pro- 
moted equality among the Western settlers, and reacted as a 
check on the aristocratic influences of the East. Where every- 
body could have a farm, almost for taking it, economic equal- 
ity easily resulted, and this involved political equality. Not 
without a struggle would the Western man abandon this ideal, 
and it goes far to explain the unrest in the remote West to-day. 

Western democracy included individual liberty, as well as 
equality. The frontiersman was impatient of restraints. He 
knew how to preserve order, even in the absence of legal 
authority. If there were cattle thieves, lynch law was sud- 
den and effective: the regulators of the Carolinas were the 
predecessors of the claims associations of Iowa and the vigi- 
lance committees of California. But the individual was not 
ready to submit to complex regulations. Population was 
sparse, there was no multitude of jostling interests, as in older 
settlements, demanding an elaborate system of personal 
restraints. Society became atomic. There was a reproduc- 
tion of the primitive idea of the personality of the law, a 
crime was more an offense against the victim than a violation 
of the law of the land. Substantial justice, secured in the 
m.ost direct way, was the ideal of the backv/oodsman. He had 
little patience with finely drawn distinctions or scruples of 
method. If the thing was one proper to be done, then the 
most immediate, rough and ready, effective way was the best 
way. 

It followed from the lack of organized political life, from 
the atomic conditions of the backwoods society, that the indi- 
vidual was exalted and given free play. The West was another 
name for opportunity. Here were mines to be seized, fertile 
valleys to be preempted, all the natural resources open to the 
shrewdest and the boldest. The United States is unique in the 



THE PROBLEM OF THE WEST 213 

extent to which the individual has been given an open field, 
unchecked by restraints of an old social order, or of scientific 
administration of government. The self-made man was the 
Western man's ideal, was the kind of man that all men misht 
become. Out of his wilderness experience, out of the free- 
dom of his opportunities, he fashioned a formula for social 
regeneration, — the freedom of the individual to seek his 
own. He did not consider that his conditions were exceptional 
and temporary. 

Under such conditions, leadership easily develops, — a 
leadership based on the possession of the qualities most serv- 
iceable to the young society. In the history of Western set- 
tlement, we see each forted village following its local hero. 
Clay, Jackson, Harrison, Lincoln, were illustrations of this 
tendency in periods when the Western hero rose to the dignity 
of national hero. 

The Western man believed in the m.anifest destiny of his 
country. On his border, and checking his advance, were 
the Indian, the Spaniard, and the Englishman. He was indig- 
nant at Eastern indifference and lack of sympathy with his 
view of his relations to these peoples; at the short-sightedness 
of Eastern policy. The closure of the Mississippi by Spain, 
and the proposal to exchange our claim of freedom of navi- 
gating the river, in return for commercial advantages to New 
England, nearly led to the withdrawal of the West from the 
Union. It was the Western demands that brought about the 
purchase of Louisiana, and turned the scale in favor of declar- 
ing the War of 1812. Militant qualities were favored by the 
annual expansion of the settled area in the face of hostile Indi- 
ans and the stubborn wilderness. The West caught the vision 
of the nation's continental destiny. Henry Adams,'m his His- 
tory of the United States, makes the American of 1800 exclaim 
to the foreign visitor, "Look at my wealth! See these solid 



214 THE FRONTIER LN AxMERICAN HISTORY 

mountains of salt and iron, of lead, copper, silver, and gold. 
See these magnificent cities scattered broadcast to the Pacific! 
See my cornfields rustling and waving in the summer breeze 
from ocean to ocean, so far that the sun itself is not high 
enough to mark where the distant mountains bound my golden 
seas. Look at this continent of mine, fairest of created worlds, 
as she lies turning up to the sun's never failing caress her 
broad and exuberant breasts, overflowing with milk for her 
hundred million children." And the foreigner saw only 
dreary deserts, tenanted by sparse, ague-stricken pioneers and 
savages. The cities were log huts and gambling dens. But 
the frontiersman's dream was prophetic. In spite of his 
rude, gross nature, this early Western man was an idealist , 
withal. He dreamed dreams and beheld visions. He had 
faith in man, hope for democracy, belief in America's destiny, 
unbounded confidence in his ability to make his dreams come 
true. Said Harriet Martineau in 1834, " I regard the Amer- 
ican people as a great embryo poet, now moody, now wild, 
but bringing out results of absolute good sense: restless and 
wayward in action, but with deep peace at his heart; exulting 
that he has caught the true aspect of things past, and the 
depth of futurity which lies before him, wherein to create 
something so magnificent as the world has scarcely begun to 
dream of. There is the strongest hope of a nation that is 
capable of being possessed with an idea." 

It is important to bear this idealism of the West in mind. 
The very materialism that has been urged against the West 
was accompanied by ideals of equality, of the exaltation of 
the common man, of national expansion, that makes it a 
profound mistake to write of the West as though it were 
engrossed in mere material ends. It has been, and is, preemi- 
nently a region of ideals, mistaken or not. 

It is obvious that these economic and social conditions were 



THE PROBLEM OF THE WEST 215 

I so fundamental in Western life that they might well dom- 
inate whatever accessions came to the West by immigration 
from the coast sections or from Europe. Nevertheless, the 
West cannot be understood without bearing in mind the fact 
that it has received the great streams from the North and 
from the South, and that the Mississippi compelled these cur- 
rents to intermingle. Here it was that sectionalism first gave 
way under the pressure of unification. Ultimately the con- 
flicting ideas and institutions of the old sections struggled 
for dominance in this area under the influence of the forces 
that made for uniformity, but this is merely another phase of 
the truth that the West must become unified, that it could not 
rest in sectional groupings. For precisely this reason the 
struggle occurred. In the period from the Revolution to the 
close of the War of 1812, the democracy of the Southern and 
Middle States contributed the main streams of settlement and 
social influence to the West. Even in Ohio political power 
was soon lost by the New England leaders. The democratic 
spirit of the Middle region left an indelible impress on the 
West in this its formative period. After the War of 1812, 
New England, its supremacy in the carrying trade of the 
world having vanished, became a hive from which swarms 
of settlers went out to western New York and the remoter 
regions. 

These settlers spread New England ideals of education and 
character and political institutions, and acted as a leaven 
of great significance in the Northwest. But it would be a 
mistake to believe that an unmixed New England influence 
took possession of the Northwest. These pioneers did not 
come from the class that conserved the type of New England 
civilization pure and undefiled. They represented a less con- 
tented, less conservative influence. Moreover, by their sojourn 
in the Middle Region, on their westward march, they underwent 



216 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

modification, and when the farther West received them, they 
suffered a forest-change, indeed. The Westernized New Eng- 
land man was no longer the representative of the section that he 
left. He was less conservative, less provincial, more adapt- 
able and approachable, less rigorous in his Puritan ideals, 
less a man of culture, more a man of action. 

As might have been expected, therefore, the Western men, 
in the " era of good feeling," had much homogeneity throughout 
the Mississippi Valley, and began to stand as a new national 
type. Under the lead of Henry Clay they invoked the national 
government to break down the mountain barrier by internal 
improvements, and thus to give their crops an outlet to the 
coast. Under him they appealed to the national government 
for a protective tariff to create a home market. A group of 
frontier States entered the Union with democratic provisions 
respecting the suffrage, and with devotion to the nation tliat 
had given them their lands, built tlieir roads and canals, reg- 
ulated their territorial life, and made them equals in the sister- 
hood of States. At last these Western forces of aggressive 
nationalism and democracy took possession of the govern- 
ment in the person of the man who best embodied them, 
Andrew Jackson. This new democracy that captured the coun- 
try and destroyed the ideals of statesmanship came from no 
dieorist's dreams of the German forest. It came, stark and 
strong and full of life, from the American forest. But the 
triumph of this Western democracy revealed also the fact that 
it could rally to its aid the laboring classes of the coast, 
then just beginning to acquire self-consciousness and organiza- 
tion. 

The next phase of Western development revealed forces of 
division between the northern and southern portions of the 
West. With the spread of the cotton culture went the slave 
system and the great plantation. The small farmer in his log 



THE PROBLEM OF THE WEST 217 

cabin, raising varied crops, was displaced by the planter 
raising cotton. In all except the mountainous areas the indus- 
trial organization of the tidewater took possession of the 
Southwest, the unity of the back country was broken, and the 
solid South was formed. In the Norlhwest this was the era 
of railroads and canals, opening the region to the increasing 
stream of Middle State and New England settlement, and 
strengthening the opposition to slavery. A map showing the 
location of the men of New England ancestry in the North- 
west would represent also the counties in which the Free Soil 
party cast its heaviest voles. The commercial connections of 
the Northwest likewise were reversed by the railroad. The 
result is stated by a writer in De Boivs Review in 1852 in 
these words: — 

"What is New Orleans now? Where are her dreams of 
greatness and glory? . . . Whilst she slept, an enemy has 
sowed tares in her most prolific fields. Armed with energy, 
enterprise, and an indomitable spirit, that enemy, by a system 
of bold, vigorous, and sustained efforts, has succeeded in 
reversing the very laws of nature and of nature's God, — 
rolled back the mighty tide of the Mississippi and its thousand 
tributary streams, until their mouth, practically and commer- 
cially, is more at New York or Boston than at New Orleans." 

The West broke asunder, and the great struggle over the 
social system to be given to the lands beyond the Mississippi 
followed. In the Civil War the Northwest furnished the 
national hero, — Lincoln was the very flower of frontier train- 
ing and ideals, — and it also took into its hands the whole 
power of the government. Before the war closed, the West 
could claim the President, Vice-President, Chief Justice, 
Speaker of the House, Secretary of the Treasury, Postmaster- 
General, Attorney-General, General of the army, and Admiral 
of the navy. The leading generals of the war had been fur- 



218 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

nished by the West. It was the region of action, and in the 
crisis it took the reins. 

The triumph of the nation was followed by a new era of 
Western development. The national forces projected them- 
selves across the prairies and plains. Railroads, fostered by 
government loans and land grants, opened the way for settle- 
ment and poured a flood of European inmiigrants and restless 
pioneers from all sections of the Union into the government 
lands. The army of the United States pushed back the Indian, 
rectangular Territories were carved into checkerboard States, 
creations of the federal government, without a history, with- 
out physiographical unity, without particularistic ideas. The 
later frontiersman leaned on the strong arm of national power. 

At the same time the South underwent a revolution. The 
plantation, based on slavery, gave place to the farm, the gentry 
to the democratic elements. As in the West, new industries, 
of mining and of manufacture, sprang up as by magic. The 
New South, like the New West, was an area of construction, a 
debtor area, an area of unrest; and it, too, had learned the 
uses to which federal legislation might be put. 

In the meantime the Old Northwest ^ passed through an 
economic and social transformation. The whole West fur- 
nished an area over which successive waves of economic devel- 
opment have passed. The State of Wisconsin, now much like 
parts of the State of New York, was at an earlier period like 
the State of Nebraska of to-day; the Granger movement and 
Greenback party had for a time the ascendancy; and in the 
northern counties of the State, where there is a sparser popu- 
lation, and the country is being settled, its sympathies are still 
with tlie debtor class. Thus the Old Northwest is a region 
where the older frontier conditions survive in parts, and where 

2 The present States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wis- 
consin. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE WEST 219 

the inherited ways of looking at things are largely to he traced 
to its frontier days. At the same time it is a region in many 
ways assimilated to the East. It understands both sections. 
It is not entirely content with the existing structure of economic 
society in the sections where wealth has accumulated and cor- 
porate organizations are powerful; but neither has it seemed 
to feel that its interests lie in supporting the program of the 
prairies and the South. In the Fifty-third Congress it voted 
for the income tax, but it rejected free coinage. It is still 
affected by the ideal of the self-made man, rather than by the 
ideal of industrial nationalism. It is more American, but less 
cosmopolitan than the seaboard. 

We are now in a position to see clearly some of the factors 
involved in the Western problem. For nearly three centuries 
the dominant fact in American life has been expansion. With 
the settlement of the Pacific coast and the occupation of the 
free lands, this movement has com.e to a check. That these 
energies of expansion will no longer operate would be a rash 
prediction; and the demands for a vigorous foreign policy, for 
an interoceanic canal, for a revival of our power upon the 
seas, and for the extension of American influence to outlying 
islands and adjoining countries, are indications that the move- 
ment will continue. The stronghold of these demands lies 
west of the Alleghanies. 

In the remoter West, the restless, rushing wave of settlement i i 
has broken with a shock against the arid plains. The free ' 
lands are gone, the continent is crossed, and all this push and 
energy is turning into channels of agitation. Failures in one, 
area can no longer be made good by taking up land on a new; 
frontier; the conditions of a settled society are being reached' 
with suddenness and with confusion. The West has been built 
up with borrowed capital, and the question of the stability of 
gold, as a standard of deferred payments, is eagerly agitated 



220 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

by the debtor West, profoundly dissatisfied with the industrial 
conditions that confront it, and actuated by frontier directness 
and rigor in its remedies. For the most part, the men who 
built up the West beyond the Mississippi, and who are now 
leading the agitation,^ came as pioneers from the old North- 
west, in the days when it was just passing from the stage of a 
frontier section. For example. Senator Allen of Nebraska, 
president of the recent national Populist Convention, and a 
type of the political leaders of his section, was born in Ohio 
in the middle of the century, went in his youth to Iowa, and 
not long after the Civil War made his home in Nebraska. As 
a boy, he saw the buffalo driven out by the settlers; he saw 
the Indian retreat as the pioneer advanced. His training is 
that of the old West, in its frontier days. And now the fron- 
tier opportunities are gone. Discontent is demanding an 
extension of governmental activity in its behalf. In these 
demands, it finds itself in touch with the depressed agricultural 
classes and the workingmen of the South and East. The 
Western problem is no longer a sectional problem: it is a 
social problem on a national scale. The greater West, extend- 
ing from the Alleghanies to the Pacific, cannot be regarded 
as a unit; it requires analysis into regions and classes. But 
its area, its population, and its material resources would give 
force to its assertion that if there is a sectionalism in the 
country, the sectionalism is Eastern. The old West, united 
to the new South, would produce, not a new sectionalism, but 
a new Americanism. It would not mean sectional disunion, 
as some have speculated, but it might mean a drastic assertion 
of national government and imperial expansion under a pop- 
ular hero. 

This, then, is the real situation: a people composed of 
heterogeneous materials, with diverse and conflicting ideals 

* [Written in the year of Mr. Bryan's first presidential campaign.] 



THE PROBLEM OF THE WEST 221 

and social interests, having passed from the task of filling up 
the vacant spaces of the continent, is now thrown back upon 
itself, and is seeking an equilibrium. The diverse elements are 
being fused into national unity. The forces of reorganiza- 
tion are turbulent and the nation seems like a witches' kettle. 

But the West has its own centers of industrial life and culture 
not unlike those of the East. It has State universities, rivaling 
in conservative and scientific economic instruction those of any 
other part of the Union, and its citizens more often visit the 
East, than do Eastern men the West. As time goes on, its 
industrial development will bring it more into harmony with 
the East. 

Moreover, the Old Northwest holds the balance of power, 
and is the battlefield on which these issues of American devel- 
opment are to be settled. It has more in common with all 
parts of the nation than has any other region. It understands 
the East, as the East does not understand the West. The 
Wliite City which recently rose on the shores of Lake Michigan 
fitly typified its growing culture as well as its capacity for 
great achievement. Its complex and representative industrial 
organization and business ties, its determination to hold fast 
to what is original and good in its Western experience, and its 
readiness to learn and receive the results of the experience of 
other sections and nations, make it an open-minded and safe 
arbiter of the American destiny. 

In the long run the " Center of the Republic " may be 
trusted to strike a wise balance between the contending ideals. 
But she does not deceive herself; she knows that the problem 
of the West means nothing less than the problem of working 
out original social ideals and social adjustments for the Amer- 
ican nation. 



VIII 
Dominant Forces in Western Life^ 

The Old Northwest is a name which tells of the vestiges 
which the march of settlement across the American continent 
has left behind it. The New Northwest fronts the watery 
labyrinth of Puget Sound and awaits its destiny upon the 
Pacific. The Old Northwest, the historic Northwest Territory, 
is now the new Middle Region of the United States. A century 
ago it was a wilderness, broken only by a few French settle- 
ments and the straggling American hamlets along the Ohio 
and its tributaries, while, on the shore of Lake Erie, Moses 
Cleaveland had just led a handful of men to the Connecticut 
Reserve. To-day it is the keystone of the American Common- 
wealth. Since 1860 the center of population of the United 
States has rested within its limits, and the center of manufac- 
turing in the nation lies eight miles from President McKinley's 
Ohio home. Of the seven men who have been elected to the 
presidency of the United States since 1860, six have come 
from the Old Northwest, and the seventh came from the kin- 
dred region of western New York. The congressional Repre- 
sentatives from these five States of the Old Northwest already 
outnumber those from the old Middle States, and are three 
times as numerous as those from New England. 

The elements that have contributed to the civilization of 
this region are tlierefore well worth consideration. To know 
the Stales that make up the Old Northwest — Ohio, Indiana, 

^Atlantic Monthly, April, 1897. Published by permission. 

222 



DOMINANT FORCES IN WESTERN LIFE 223 

Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin — one must understand their 
social origins. 

Eldest in this sisterhood was Ohio. New England gave the 
formative impulses to this State by the part which the Ohio 
Company played in securing the Ordinance of 1787, and at 
Marietta and Cleveland Massachusetts and Connecticut planted 
enduring centers of Puritan influence. During the same period 
New Jersey and Pennsylvania sent their colonists to the 
Symmes Purchase, in which Cincinnati was the rallying-point, 
while Virginians sought the Military Bounty Lands in tlie re- 
gion of Chillicothe. The Middle States and the South, with 
their democratic ideas, constituted the dominant element in 
Ohio politics in the early part of her history. This dominance 
is shown by the nativity of the members of the Ohio legislature 
elected in 1820: New England furnished nine Senators and 
sixteen Representatives, chiefly from Connecticut; New York, 
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, seventeen Senators and twenty- 
one Representatives, mostly from Pennsylvania; while the 
South furnished nine Senators and twenty-seven Representa- 
tives, of whom the majority came from Virginia. Five of the 
Representatives were native of Ireland, presumably Scotch- 
Irishmen. In the Ohio Senate, therefore, the Middle States 
had as many representatives as had New England and the 
South together, while the Southern men slightly outnumbered 
the Middle States men in the Assembly. Together, the emi- 
grants from the Democratic South and Middle Region outnum- 
bered the Federalist New Englanders three to one. Although 
Ohio is popularly considered a child of New England, it is 
clear that in these formative years of her statehood the com- 
monwealth was dominated by other forces. 

By the close of this early period, in 1820, the settlement in 
Ohio had covered more or less fully all except the northwest 
corner of the State, and Indiana's formative period was well 



224 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

started. Here, as in Ohio, there was a large Southern element. 
But while the Southern stream that flowed into Ohio had its 
sources in Virginia, the main current that sought Indiana came 
from North Carolina; and these settlers were for the most 
part from the humbler classes. In the settlement of Indiana 
from the South two separate elements are distinguishable: the 
Quaker migration from North Carolina, moving chiefly because 
of anti-slavery convictions; the "poor white" stream, made 
up in part of restless hunters and thriftless pioneers moving 
without definite ambitions, and in part of other classes, such 
as former overseers, migrating to the new country with definite 
purpose of improving their fortunes. 

These elements constituted well-marked features in the South- 
ern contribution to Indiana, and they explain why she has 
been named the Hoosier State; but it should by no means be 
thought that all of the Southern immigrants came under these 
classes, nor that these have been the normal elements in the 
development of the Indiana of to-day. In the Northwest, 
where interstate migration has been so continuous and wide- 
spread, the lack of typical State peculiarities is obvious, and 
the student of society, like the traveler, is tempted, in his 
eff"ort to distinguish the community from its neighbors, to 
exaggerate the odd and exceptional elements which give a 
particular flavor to the State. Indiana has suffered somewhat 
from this tendency; but it is undoubted that these peculiarities 
of origin left deep and abiding influences upon the State. In 
1820 her settlement was chiefly in the southern counties, where 
Southern and Middle States influence was dominant. Her 
two United States Senators were Virginians by birth, while 
her Representative was from Pennsylvania. The Southern 
element continued so powerful that one student of Indiana 
origins has estimated that in 1850 one-third of the popula- 
tion of the State were native Carolinians and their children 



DOMINANT FORCES IN WESTERN LIFE 225 

in the first generation. Not until a few years before the Civil 
War did the Northern current exert a decisive influence upon 
Indiana. She had no such lake ports as had her sister States, 
and extension of settlement into the State from ports like 
Chicago was interrupted by the less attractive area of the north- 
western part of Indiana. Add to this the geological fact that 
the limestone ridges and the best soils ran in nearly perpen- 
dicular belts northward from the Ohio, and it will be seen how 
circum.stances combined to diminish Northern and to facili- 
tate Southern influences in the State prior to the railroad devel- 
opment. 

In Illinois, also, the current of migration was at first pre- 
ponderantly Southern, but the settlers were less often from 
the Atlantic coast. Kentucky and Tennessee were generous 
contributors, but many of the distinguished leaders came from 
Virginia, and it is worthy of note that in 1820 the two United 
States Senators of Illinois were of Maryland ancestry, while 
her Representative was of Kentucky origin. The swarms of 
land-seekers between 1820 and 1830 ascended the Illinois 
river, and spread out between that river and the Mississippi. 
It was in this period that Abraham Lincoln's father, who had 
come from Kentucky to Indiana, again left his log cabin and 
traveled by ox-team with his family to the popular Illinois 
county of Sangamon. Here Lincoln split his famous rails 
to fence their land, and grew up under the influences of this 
migration of the Southern pioneers to the prairies. They 
were not predominantly of the planter class; but the fierce con- 
test in 1824 over the proposition to open Illinois to slavery was 
won for freedom by a narrow majority. 

Looking at the three States, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, 
prior to 1850, we perceive how important was the voice of the 
South here, and we can the more easily understand the early 
afi&liation of the Northwest with her sister States to the south 



226 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

on the Western waters. It was not without reason that the 
proposal of the Missouri Compromise came from Illinois, and 
it was a natural enthusiasm with which these Slates followed 
Henry Clay in the war policy of 1812. The combination of 
the South, the western portion of the Middle States, and the 
Mississippi Valley gave the ascendancy to the democratic 
ideals of the followers of Jefferson, and left New England a 
weakened and isolated section for nearly half a century. 
Many of the most characteristic elements in American life in 
the first part of the century were due to this relationship 
between the South and the trans-Alleghany region. But even 
thus early the Northwest had revealed strong predilections 
for the Northern economic ideals as against the peculiar insti- 
tution of the South, and this tendency grew with the increase 
of New England immigration. 

The northern two in this sisterhood of Northwestern States 
were the first to be entered by the French, but latest by the 
English settlers. Why Michigan was not occupied by New 
York men at an earlier period is at first sight not easy to 
understand. Perhaps the adverse reports of surveyors who 
visited the interior of the State, the partial geographical isola- 
tion, and the unprogressive character of the French settlers 
account for the tardy occupation of the area. Certain it is 
that while the southern tier of States was sought by swarms 
of settlers, Wisconsin and Michigan still echoed to Canadian 
boating-songs, and voyageurs paddled their birch canoes along 
the streams of the wilderness to traffic with the savages. Great 
Britain maintained the dominant position until after the War 
of 1812, and the real center of authority was in Canada. 

But after the digging of the Erie Canal, settlement began 
to turn into Michigan. Between 1830 and 1840 the popula- 
tion of the Slate leaped from 31,000 to 212,000, in the face 
of the fact that the heavy debt of the State and the crisis of 



DOMINANT FORCES IN WESTERN LIFE 227 

1837 turned from her borders many of the thrifty, debt-hating 
Germans. The vast majority of the settlers were New Yorkers. 
Michigan is distinctly a child of the Empire State. Canadians, 
both French and English, continued to come as the lumber 
interests of the region increased. By 1850 Michigan con- 
tained nearly 400,000 inhabitants, who occupied the southern 
half of the State. 

But she now found an active competitor for settlement in 
Wisconsin. In this region two forces had attracted the earlier 
inhabitants. The fur-trading posts of Green Bay, Prairie du 
Chien, and Milwaukee constituted one element, in which the 
French influence was continued. The lead region of the south- 
west corner of the State formed the center of attraction for 
Illinois and Southern pioneers. The soldiers who followed 
Black Hawk's trail in 1832 reported the richness of the soil, 
and an era of immigration followed. To the port of Mil- 
waukee came a combined migration from western New York 
and New England, and spread along the southern tier of prairie 
counties until it met the Southern settlers in the lead region. 
Many of the early political contests in the State were con- 
nected, as in Ohio and Illinois, with the antagonisms between 
the sections thus brought together in a limited area. 

The other element in the formation of Wisconsin was that 
of the Germans, then just entering upon their vast immigration 
to the United States. Wisconsin was free from debt; she made 
a constitution of exceptional liberality to foreigners, and 
instead of treasuring her school lands or using them for inter- 
nal improvements, she sold them for almost nothing to attract 
immigration. The result was that the prudent Germans, who 
loved light taxes and cheap hard wood lands, turned toward 
Wisconsin, — another Volkerwanderung. From Milwaukee as 
a center they spread north along the shore of Lake Michigan, 
and later into northern central Wisconsin, following the belt 



228 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

of the hardwood forests. So considerable were their numbers 
that such an economist as Roscher wrote of the feasibility of 
making Wisc-onsin a German State. " They can plant the vine 
on the hills," cried Franz Loher in 1847, " and drink with 
happy song and dance; they can have German schools and 
universities, German literature and art, German science and 
philosophy, German courts and assemblies; in short, they can 
form a German State, in which the German language shall be 
as much the popular and official language as the English is 
now, and in which the German spirit shall rule." By 1860 
the German-born were sixteen per cent of the population of 
the State. But the New York and New England stream proved 
even more broad and steady in its flow in these years before 
the war. Wisconsin's population rose from 30,000 in 1840 
to 300,000 in 1850. 

The New England element that entered this State is prob- 
ably typical of the same element in Wisconsin's neighboring 
States, and demands notice. It came for the most part, not 
from the seaboard of Massachusetts, which has so frequently 
represented New England to the popular apprehension. A 
large element in this stock was the product of the migration 
that ascended the valley^ of Connecticut and central Massa- 
chusetts through the hills into Vermont and New York, — a 
pioneer folk almost from the time of their origin. The Ver- 
m.ont colonists decidedly outnumbered those of Massachusetts 
in both Michigan and Wisconsin, and were far more numerous 
in other Northwestern States than the population of Vermont 
warranted. Together with this current came the settlers from 
western New York. These were generally descendants of this 
same pioneer New England stock, continuing into a remoter 
West the movement that had brought their parents to New 
York. The combined current from New England and New 
York thus constituted a distinctly modified New England stock, 



DOMINANT FORCES IN WESTERN LIFE 229 

and was clearly the dominant native element in Michigan and 
Wisconsin. 

The decade of the forties was also the period of Iowa's 
rapid increase. Although not politically a part of the Old 
Northwest, in history she is closely related to that region. 
Her growth was by no means so rapid as was Wisconsin's, for 
the proportion of foreign immigration was less. Whereas in 
1850 more than one-third of Wisconsin's population was for- 
eign-born, the proportion for Iowa was not much over one- 
tenth. The main body of her people finally came from the 
Middle States, and Illinois and Ohio; but Southern elements 
were well represented, particularly among her political leaders. 

The middle of the century was the turning-point in the trans- 
fer of control in the Northwest. Below the line of the old 
national turnpike, marked by the cities of Columbus, Indianap- 
olis, Vandalia, and St. Louis, the counties had acquired a 
stability of settlem.ent; and partly because of the Southern 
element, partly because of a natural tendency of new commu- 
nities toward Jacksonian ideals, these counties were prepon- 
derantly Democratic. But the Southern migration had turned 
to the cotton areas of the Southwest, and the development of 
railroads and canals had broken the historic commercial 
ascendancy of the Mississippi Pciver; New Orleans was yielding 
the scepter to New York. The tide of migration from the 
North poured along these newly opened channels, and occu- 
pied the less settled counties above the national turnpike. In 
cities like Columbus and Indianapolis, where the two currents 
had run side by side, the combined elements were most clearly 
marked, but in the Northwest as a whole a varied population 
had been form.ed. This region seemed to represent and under- 
stand the various parts of the Union. It was this aspect 
which Mr. Vinton, of Ohio, urged in Congress when he made 
his notable speech in favor of the admission of Iowa. He 



230 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

pleaded the mission of the Northwest as the mediator between 
the sections and the unifying agency in the nation, with such 
power and pathos as to thrill even John Quincy Adams. 

But there are some issues which cannot be settled by com- 
promise, tendencies one of which must conquer the other. 
Such an issue the slave power raised, and raised too late for 
support in the upper half of the Mississippi Basin. The 
Northern and the Southern elements found themselves in oppo- 
sition to each other. " A house divided against itself cannot 
stand," said Abraham Lincoln, a Northern leader of Southern 
origin. Douglas, a leader of the Southern forces, though 
coming from New England, declared his indifference whether 
slavery were voted up or down in the Western Territories. , 
The historic debates between these two champions reveal the 
complex conditions in the Northwest, and take on a new mean- 
ing when considered in the light of this contest between the 
Northern and the Southern elements. The State that had 
been so potent for compromise was at last the battle-ground 
itself, and the places selected for the various debates of Lin- 
coln and Douglas marked the strongLolds and the outposts 
of the antagonistic forces. 

At this time the kinship of western New York and the dom- 
inant element in the Northwest v/as clearly revealed. Speak- 
ing for the anti-slavery forces at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1860, 
Seward said: " The Northwest is by no means so small as you 
may think it. I speak to you because I feel that I am, and 
during all my mature life have been, one of you. Although 
of New York, I am still a citizen of the Northwest. The 
Northwest extends eastward to the base of the Alleghany 
Mountains, and does not all of western New York lie westward 
of the Alleghany Mountains? Whence comes all the inspira- 
tion of free soil which spreads itself with such cheerful voices 
over all these plains? Why, from New York westward of 



DOMINANT FORCES IN WESTERN LIFE 231 

the Alleghany Mountains. The people before me, — who are 
you but New York men, while you are men of the North- 
west?" In the Civil War, western New York and the North- 
west were powerful in the forum and in the field. A million 
soldiers came from the States that the Ordinance, passed by 
Southern votes, had devoted to freedom. 

This was the first grave time of trial for the Northwest, and 
it did much eventually to give to the region a homogeneity and 
self-consciousness. But at the close of the war the region 
was still agricultural, only half-developed; still breaking 
ground in northern forests; still receiving contributions of 
peoples which radically modified the social organism, and 
undergoing economic changes almost revolutionary in their 
rapidity and extent. The changes since the war are of more 
social importance, in many respects, than those in the years 
commonly referred to as the formative period. As a result, 
the Northwest finds herself again between contending forces, 
sharing the interests of East and West, as once before those 
of North and South, and forced to give her voice on issues 
of equal significance for the destiny of the republic. 

In these transforming years since 1860, Ohio, finding the 
magician's talisman that revealed the treasury of mineral 
weallh, gas, and petroleum beneath her fields, has leaped to a 
front rank among the manufacturing States of the Union. 
Potential on the Great Lakes by reason of her ports of Toledo 
and Cleveland, tapping the Ohio river artery of trade at 
Cincinnati, and closely connected with ail the vast material 
development of the upper waters of this river in western 
Pennsylvania and West Virginia, Ohio has become distinctly 
a part of the eastern social organism, much like the State of 
Pennsylvania. The complexity of her origin still persists. 
Ohio has no preponderant social center; her multiplicity of 
colleges and universities bears tribute to the diversity of the 



232 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

elements that have made the State. One-third of her people 
are of foreign parentage (one or both parents foreign-born), 
and the city of Cincinnati has been deeply affected by the 
German stock, while Cleveland strongly reflects the influence 
of the New England element. That influence is still very pal- 
pable, but it is New England in the presence of natural gas, 
iron, and coal, New England shaped by blast and forge. 
The Middle State ideals will dominate Ohio's future. 

Bucolic Indiana, too, within the last decade has come into 
the possession of gas-fields and has increased the exploitation 
of her coals until she seems destined to share in the industrial 
type represented by Ohio. Cities have arisen, like a dream, on 
the sites of country villages. But Indiana has a much smaller 
proportion of foreign elements than any other State of the 
Old Northwest, and it is the Southern element that still difi"er- 
entiates her from her sisters. While Ohio's political leaders 
still attest the Puritan migration, Indiana's clasp hands with 
the leaders from the South. 

The Southern elements continue also to reveal themselves in 
the Democratic southwestern counties of Illinois, grouped like 
a broad delta of the Illinois River, while northern Illinois 
holds a larger proportion of descendants of the Middle States 
and New England. About one-half her population is of for- 
eign parentage, in which the German, Irish, and Scandinavians 
furnish the largest elements. She is a great agricultural State 
and a great manufacturing State, the connecting link between 
the Mississippi and the Great Lakes. Her metropolis, Chicago, 
is the very type of Northwestern development for good and . 
for evil. It is an epitome of her composite nationality. A 
recent writer, analyzing the school census of Chicago, points 
out that " only two cities in the German Empire, Berlin and 
Hamburg, have a greater German population than Chicago; 
only two in Sweden, Stockholm and Goteborg, have more 



DOMINANT FORCES IN WESTERN LIFE 233 

Swedes; and only two in Norway, Christiana and Bergen, have 
more Norwegians"; while the Irish, Polish, Bohemians, and 
Dutch elements are also largely represented. But in spite of her 
rapidity of growth and her complex elements, Chicago stands 
as the representative of tlie will-power and genius for action 
of the Middle West, and the State of Illinois will be the battle- 
ground for social and economic ideals for the next generation. 

Michigan is two States. The northern peninsula is cut off 
from the southern physically, industrially, and in the history 
of settlement. It would seem that her natural destiny was 
with Wisconsin, or some possible new State embracing the iron 
and copper, forest and shipping areas of Michigan, Wisconsin, 
and Minnesota on Lake Superior. The lower peninsula of 
Michigan is the daughter of New York and over twelve per 
cent of Michigan's present population were born in that State, 
and her traits are those of the parent State. Over half her 
population is of foreign parentage, of which Canada and 
England together have furnished one-half, while the Germans 
outnumber any other single foreign element. The State has 
undergone a steady industrial development, exploiting her 
northern mines and forests, developing her lumber interests 
with Saginaw as the center, raising fruits along the lake shore 
counties, and producing grain in the middle trough of coun- 
ties running from Saginaw Bay to the south of Lake Michigan. 
Her state university has been her peculiar glory, furnishing 
the first model for the state university, and it is the educational 
contribution of the Northwest to the nation. 

Wisconsin's future is dependent upon the influence of the 
large proportion of her population of foreign parentage, for 
nearly three-fourths of her inhabitants are of that class. She 
thus has a smaller percentage of native population than any 
other of the States formed from the Old Northwest. Of this 
foreign element the Germans constitute by far the largest part. 



234 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

with the Scandinavians second. Her American population 
born outside of Wisconsin comes chiefly from New York. In 
contrast with the Ohio River States, she lacks the Southern 
element. Her greater foreign population and her dairy inter- 
ests contrast with Michigan's Canadian and English elements 
and fruit culture. Her relations are more Western than Mich- 
igan's by reason of her connection with the Mississippi and 
the prairie States. Her foreign element is slightly less than 
Minnesota's, and in the latter State the Scandinavians take 
the place held by the Germans in Wisconsin. The facility 
with which the Scandinavians catch the spirit of Western 
America and assimilate with their neighbors is much greater 
than is the case with the Germans, so that Wisconsin seems to 
offer opportunity for non-English influence in a greater degree 
than her sister on the west. While Minnesota's economic 
development has heretofore been closely dependent on the 
wheat-producing prairies, the opening of the iron fields of the 
Mesabi and Vermilion ranges, together with the development 
of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Duluth and West Superior, and 
the prospective achievement of a deep-water communication 
with the Atlantic, seem to offer to that Slate a new and 
imperial industrial destiny. Between this stupendous eco- 
nomic future to the northwest and the colossal growth of 
Chicago on the southeast Wisconsin seems likely to become a 
middle agricultural area, developing particularly into a dairy 
State. She is powerfully affected by the conservative tenden- 
cies of her German element in times of political agitation and 
of proposals of social change. 

Some of the social modifications in this State are more or 
less typical of important processes at work among the neigh- 
boring Slates of the Old Northwest. In the north, the men 
who built up the lumber interests of the State, who founded 
a mill town surrounded by the stumps of the pine forests 



DOMINANT FORCES IN WESTERN LIFE 235 

which they exploited for the prairie markets, have acquired 
wealth and political power. The spacious and well-appointed 
home of the town-builder may now be seen in many a northern 
community, in a group of less pretentious homes of operatives 
and tradesmen, the social distinctions between them emphasized 
by the difference in nationality. A few years before, this 
captain of industry was perhaps actively engaged in the task 
of seeking the best " forties " or directing the operations of 
his log-drivers. His wife and daughters make extensive visits 
to Europe, his sons go to some university, and he himself is 
likely to acquire political position, or to devote his energies to 
saving the town from industrial decline, as the timber is cut 
away, by transforming it into a manufacturing center for more 
finished products. Still others continue their activity among 
the forests of the South. This social history of the limber 
areas of Wisconsin has left clear indications in the development 
of the peculiar political leadership in the northern portion of 
the State. 

k In the southern and middle counties of the State, the orig- 
inal settlement of the native American pioneer farmer, a 
tendency is showing itself to divide the farms and to sell to 
thrifty Germans, or to cultivate the soil by tenants, while the 
farmer retires to live in the neighboring village, and perhaps 
to organize creameries and develop a dairy business./ The 
result is that a replacement of nationalities is in progress. 
Townships and even counties once dominated by the native 
American farmers of New York extraction are now possessed 
by Germans or other European nationalities. Large portions 
of the retail trades of the towns are also passing into German 
hands, while the native element seeks the cities, the profes- 
sions, or mercantile enterprises of larger character. The non- 
native element shows distinct tendencies to dwell in groups. 
One of the most striking illustrations of this fact is the com- 



236 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

munity of New Glarus, in Wisconsin, formed by a carefully 
organized migration from Glarus in Switzerland, aided by the 
canton itself. For some years this community was a miniature 
Swiss canton in social organization and customs, but of late 
it has become increasingly assimilated to the American type, 
and has left an impress by transforming the county in which 
it is from a grain-raising to a dairy region. 

From Milwaukee as a center, the influence of the Germans 
upon the social customs and ideals of Wisconsin has been 
marked. Milwaukee has many of the aspects of a German 
city, and has furnished a stronghold of resistence to native 
American efforts to enact rigid temperance legislation, laws 
regulative of parochial schools, and similar attempts to bend 
the German type to the social ideas of the pioneer American 
stock. In the last presidential election, the German area of 
the State deserted the Democratic party, and its opposition to 
free silver was a decisive factor in the overwhelming victory 
of the Republicans in Wisconsin. With all the evidence of 
the persistence of the influence of this nationality, it is never- 
theless clear that each decade marks an increased assimila- 
tion and homogeneity in the State; but the result is a com- 
promise, and not a conquest by either element. 

The States of the Old Northwest gave to McKinley a plurality 
of over 367,000 out of a total vote of about 3,734,000. New 
England and the Middle States together gave him a plurality 
of 979,000 in about the same vote, while the farther West 
gave to Bryan a decisive net plurality. It thus appears that 
the Old Northwest occupied the position of a political middle 
region between East and West. The significance of this posi- 
tion is manifest when it is recalled that this section is the child 
of the East and the mother of the Populistic West. 

The occupation of the Western prairies was determined by 
forces similar to those which settled the Old Northwest. Iq 



DOMINANT FORCES IN WESTERN LIFE 237 

the decade before the war, Minnesota succeeded to the place 
held by Wisconsin as the Mecca of settlers in the prior decade. 
To Wisconsin and New York she owes the largest proportion 
of her native settlers born outside of the State. Kansas and 
Nebraska were settled most rapidly in the decade following 
the war, and had a large proportion of soldiers in their Amer- 
ican immigrants. Illinois and Ohio together furnished about 
one-third of the native settlers of these States, but the element 
coming from Southern States was stronger in Kansas than in 
Nebraska. Both these States have an exceptionally large pro- 
portion of native whites as compared with their neighbors 
among the prairie States. Kansas, for example, has about 
tv.^enty-six per cent of persons of foreign parentage, while 
Nebraska has about forty-two, Iowa forty-three, South Dakota 
sixty, Wisconsin seventy-three, Minnesota seventy-five, and 
North Dakota seventy-nine. North Dakota's development was 
greatest in the decade prior to 1890. Her native stock came 
in largest numbers from Wisconsin, with New York, Minne- 
sota, and Iowa next in order. The growth of South Dakota 
occupied the two decades prior to the census of 1890, and she 
has recruited her native element from Wisconsin, Iowa, Illi- 
nois, and New York. 

In consequence of the large migration from the States of 
the Old Northwest to the virgin soils of these prairie States 
many counties in the parent States show a considerable decline 
in growth in the decade before 1890. There is significance 
in the fact that, with the exception of Iowa, these prairie States, 
the colonies of the Old Northwest, gave Bryan voles in tlie 
election of 1896 in the ratio of their proportion of persons 
of native parentage. North Dakota, with the heaviest foreign 
element, was carried for McKinley, while South Dakota, with 
a much smaller foreign vote, went for Bryan. Kansas and 
Nebraska rank with Ohio in their native percentage, and they 



238 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

were the center of prairie Populism. Of course, there were 
other important local economic and political explanations for 
this ratio, but it seems to have a basis of real meaning. Cer- 
tain it is that the leaders of the silver movement came from 
the native element furnished by the Old Northwest. The 
original Populists in the Kansas legislature of 1891 were born 
in different States as follows: in Ohio, twelve; Indiana, six; 
Illinois, five; New York, four; Pennsylvania, two; Connecticut, 
Vermont, and Maine, one each, — making a total, for the 
Northern current, of thirty-two. Of the remaining eighteen, 
thirteen were from the South, and one each from Kansas, 
Missouri, California, England and Ireland. Nearly all were 
Methodists and former Republicans.^ 

Looking at the silver movement more largely, we find that 
of the Kansas delegation in the Fifty-fourth Congress, one 
was born in Kansas, and the rest in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, 
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maine. All of the Nebraska 
delegation in the House came from the Old Northwest or from 
Iowa. The biographies of the two Representatives from the 
State of Washington tell an interesting story. These men 
came as children to the pine woods of Wisconsin, took up 
public lands, and worked on the farm and in the pineries. 
One passed on to a homestead in Nebraska before settling in 
Washington. Thus they kept one stage ahead of the social 
transformations of the West. This is the usual training of 
the Western politicians. If the reader would see a picture 
of the representative Kansas Populist, let him examine the 
family portraits of the Ohio farmer in the middle of this 
century. 

In a word, the Populist is the American farmer who has 
kept in advance of the economic and social transformations 

1 For this information I am indebted to Professor F. W. Blackmar, of 
the University of Kansas. 



DOiMIiNANT FORCES IN WESTERN LIFE 239 

that have overtaken those who remained behind. While, doubt- 
less, investigation into the ancestry of the Populists and " silver 
men " who came to the prairies from the Old Northwest would 
show a large proportion of Southern origin, yet the center of 
discontent seems to have been among the men of the New 
England and New York current. If New England looks with 
care at these men, she may recognize in them the familiar linea- 
ments of the embattled farmers who fired the shot heard round 
the world. The continuous advance of this pioneer stock from 
New England has preserved for us the older type of the pioneer 
of frontier New England. 

I do not overlook the transforming influences of the wil- 
derness on this stock ever since it left the earlier frontier 
to follow up the valleys of western Connecticut, Massachu- 
setts, and Vermont, into western New York, into Ohio, into 
Iowa, and out to the arid plains of western Kansas and 
Nebraska; nor do I overlook the peculiar industrial conditions 
of the prairie States. But I desire to insist upon the other 
truth, also, that these westward immigrants, keeping for gen- 
erations, in advance of the transforming industrial and social 
forces that have wrought so vast a revolution in the older 
regions of the East which they left, could not but preserve 
important aspects of the older farmer type. In the arid West 
these pioneers have halted and have turned to perceive an 
altered nation and changed social ideals. They see the sharp 
contrast between their traditional idea of America, as the land 
of opportunity, the land of the self-made man, free from class 
distinctions and from the power of wealth, and the existing 
America, so unlike the earlier ideal. If we follow back the 
line of march of the Puritan farmer, we shall see how respon- 
sive he has always been to isms, and how persistently he has 
resisted encroachments on his ideals of individual opportunity 
and democracy. He is the prophet of the " higher law " in 



240 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Kansas before the Civil War. He is the Prohibitionist of 
Iowa and Wisconsin, crying out against German customs as 
an invasion of his traditional ideals. He is the Granger of 
Wisconsin, passing restrictive railroad legislation. He is the 
Abolitionist, the Anti-mason, the Miller ite, the Woman Suf- 
fragist, the Spiritualist, the Mormon, of Western New 
York. Follow him to his New England home in the turbu- 
lent days of Shays' rebellion, paper money, stay and tender 
laws, and land banks. The radicals among these New Eng- 
land farmers hated lawyers and capitalists. " I would not 
trust them," said Abraham White, in the ratification conven- 
tion of Massachusetts, in 1788, " though every one of them 
should be a Moses." " These lawyers," cried Amos Single- 
tary, " and men of learning and moneyed men that talk so 
finely and gloss over matters so smoothly to make us poor 
illiterate people swallow the pill, expect to get into Congress 
themselves ! They mean to get all the money into their hands, 
and then they will swallow up all us little folk, like the 
Leviathan, Mr. President; yea, just as the whale swallowed up 
Jonah." 

If the voice of Mary Ellen Lease sounds raucous to the New 
England man to-day, while it is sweet music in the ears of the 
Kansas farmer, let him ponder the utterances of these frontier 
farmers in the days of the Revolution; and if he is still 
doubtful of this spiritual kinship, let him read the words of 
the levelers and sectaries of Cromwell's army. 

The story of the political leaders who remained in the place 
of their birth and shared its economic changes differs from 
the story of those who by moving to the West continued on a 
new area the old social type. In the throng of Scotch-Irish 
pioneers that entered the uplands of the Carolinas in the second 
quarter of the eighteenth century were the ancestors of Cal- 
houn and of Andrew Jackson. Remaining in this region. 



DOMINANT FORCES IN WESTERN LIFE 241 

Calhoun shared the transformations of the South Carolina 
interior. He saw it change from the area of the pioneer 
farmers to an area of great planters raising cotton by slave 
labor. This explains the transformation of the nationalist 
and protectionist Calhoun of 1816 into the state-sovereignty 
and free-trade Calhoun. Jackson, on the other hand, left the 
region while it was still a frontier, shared the frontier life of 
Tennessee, and reflected the democracy and nationalism of his 
people. Henry Clay lived long enough in the kindred State 
of Kentucky to see it pass from a frontier to a settled commu- 
nity, and his views on slavery reflected the transitional history 
of that State. Lincoln, on the other hand, born in Kentucky 
in 1809, while the State was still under frontier conditions, 
migrated in 1816 to Indiana, and in 1830 to Illinois. The 
pioneer influences of his community did much to shape his 
life, and the development of the raw frontiersman into the 
statesman was not unlike the development of his own State. 
Political leaders who experienced the later growth of the 
Northwest, like Garfield, Hayes, Harrison, and McKinley, 
show clearly the continued transformations of the section. But 
in the days when the Northwest was still in the gristle, she 
sent her sons into the newer West to continue the views of 
life and the policies of the half-frontier region they had left. 

To-day, the Norlhwest, standing between her ancestral con- 
nections in the East and her children in the West, partly 
like the East, partly like the West, finds herself in a position 
strangely like that in the days of the slavery struggle, when 
her origins presented to her a " divided duty." But these 
issues are not with the same imperious " Which? " as was the 
issue of freedom or slavery. 

Looking at the Northwest as a whole, one sees, in the char- 
acter of its industries and in the elements of its population, 
it is identified on the east with the zone of States including 



242 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the middle region and New England. Cotton culture and the 
negro make a clear line of division between the Old Northwest 
and the South. And yet in important historical ideals — in the 
process of expansion, in the persistence of agricultural inter- 
ests, in impulsiveness, in imperialistic ways of looking at the 
American destiny, in hero-worship, in the newness of its pres- 
ent social structure — the Old Northwest has much in com- 
mon with the South and the Far West. 

Behind her is the old pioneer past of simple democratic 
conditions, and freedom of opportunity for all men. Before 
her is a superb industrial development, the brilliancy of suc- 
cess as evinced in a vast population, aggregate wealth, and 
sectional power. 



IX 

Contributions of the West to American Democracy* 

Political thought in the period of the French Revolution 
tended to treat democracy as an absolute system applicable 
to all times and to all peoples, a system that was to be cre- 
ated by the act of the people themselves on philosophical 
principles. Ever since that era there has been an inclination 
on the part of writers on democracy to emphasize the ana- 
lytical and theoretical treatment to the neglect of the under- 
lying factors of historical development. 

If, however, we consider the underlying conditions and 
forces that create the democratic type of government, and at 
times contradict the external forms to which the name democ- 
racy is applied, we shall find that under this name there have 
appeared a multitude of political types radically unlike in 
fact. 

The careful student of history must, therefore, seek the 
explanation of the forms and changes of political institu- 
tions in the social and economic forces that determine them. 
To know that at any one time a nation may be called a democ- 
racy, an aristocracy, or a monarchy, is not so important as to 
know what are the social and economic tendencies of the state. 
These are the vital forces that work beneath the surface and 
dominate the external form. It is to changes in the economic 
and social life of a people that we must look for the forces 
that ultimately create and modify organs of political action. 

1 Atlantic Monthly, January, 1903. Reprinted by permission. 

243 



244 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

For the time, adaptation of political structure may be incom- 
plete or concealed. Old organs will be utilized to express 
new forces, and so gradual and subtle will be the change that 
it may hardly be recognized. The pseudo-democracies under 
the Medici at Florence and under Augustus at Rome are famil- 
iar examples of this type. Or again, if the political structure 
be rigid, incapable of responding to the changes demanded by 
growth, the expansive forces of social and economic transfor- 
mation may rend it in some catastrophe like that of the French 
Revolution. In all these changes both conscious ideals and 
unconscious social reorganization are at work. 

These facts are familiar to the student, and yet it is doubt- 
ful if they have been fully considered in connection with 
American democracy. For a century at least, in conventional 
expression, Americans have referred to a " glorious Constitu- 
tion " in explaining the stability and prosperity of their 
democracy. We have believed as a nation that other peoples 
had only to will our democratic institutions in order to repeat 
our own career. 

In dealing with Western contributions to democracy, it is 
essential that the considerations which have just been men- 
tioned shall be kept in mind. Whatever these contributions 
may have been, we find ourselves at the present time in an 
era of such profound economic and social transformation as to 
raise the question of the effect of these changes upon the 
democratic institutions of the United States. Within a decade 
four marked changes have occurred in our national develop- 
ment; taken together they constitute a revolution. 

First, there is the exliaustion of the supply of free land and 
the closing of the movement of Western advance as an eifec- 
tive factor in American development. The first rough con- 
quest of the wilderness is accomplished, and that great supply 
of free lands which year after year has served to reinforce 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 245 

the democratic influences in the United States is exhausted. It 
is true that vast tracts of government land are still untaken, 
but they constitute the mountain and arid regions, only a small 
fraction of them capable of conquest, and then only by the ap- 
plication of capital and combined effort. The free lands that 
made the American pioneer have gone. 

In the second place, contemporaneously with this there 
has been such a concentration of capital in the control of 
fundamental industries as to make a new epoch in the eco- 
nomic development of the United States. The iron, the coal, 
and the cattle of the country have all fallen under the domina- 
tion of a few great corporations with allied interests, and 
by the rapid combination of the important railroad systems 
and steamship lines, in concert with these same forces, even 
the breadstuffs and the manufactures of the nation are to some 
degree controlled in a similar way. This is largely the work 
of the last decade. The development of the gi-eatest iron 
mines of Lake Superior occurred in the early nineties, and 
in the same decade came the combination by which the coal 
and the coke of the country, and the transportation systems 
that connect them with the iron mines, have been brought 
under a few concentrated managements. Side by side with 
this concentration of capital has gone the combination of 
labor in the same vast industries. The one is in a certain 
sense the concomitant of the other, but the movement acquires 
an additional significance because of the fact that during the 
past fifteen years the labor class has been so recruited by a 
tide of foreign immigration that this class is now largely made 
up of persons of foreign parentage, and the lines of cleavage 
which begin to appear in this country between capital and labor 
have been accentuated by distinctions of nationality. 

A third phenomenon connected with the two just mentioned 
is the expansion of the United States politically and commer' 



246 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

cially into lands beyond the seas. A cycle of American 
development has been completed. Up to the close of the 
War of 1812, this country was involved in the fortunes of the 
European state system. The first quarter of a century of our 
national existence was almost a continual struggle to prevent 
ourselves being drawn into the European wars. At the close 
of that era of conflict, the United States set its face toward 
the West. It began the settlement and improvement of the 
vast interior of the country. Here was the field of our coloni- 
zation, here the field of our political activity. This process 
being completed, it is not strange that we find the United 
States again involved in world-politics. The revolution that 
occurred four years ago, when the United States struck down 
that ancient nation under whose auspices the New World was 
discovered, is hardly yet more than dimly understood. The 
insular wreckage of the Spanish War, Porto Rico and the 
Philippines, with the problems presented by the Hawaiian 
Islands, Cuba, the Isthmian Canal, and China, all are indica- 
tions of the new direction of the ship of state, and while we 
thus turn our attention overseas, our concentrated industrial 
strength has given us a striking power against the commerce 
of Europe that is already producing consternation in the Old 
World. Having completed the conquest of the wilderness, 
and having consolidated our interests, we are beginning to 
consider the relations of democracy and empire. 

And fourth, the political parties of the United States now 
tend to divide on issues that involve the question of Social- 
ism. The rise of the Populist party in the last decade, and 
the acceptance of so many of its principles by the Democratic 
party under the leadership of Mr. Bryan, show in striking 
manner the birth of new political ideas, the reformation of the 
lines of political conflict. 

It is doubtful if in any ten years of American history more 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 247 

significant factors in our growth have revealed themselves. 
The struggle of the pioneer farmers to subdue the arid lands 
of the Great Plains in the eighties was followed by the official 
announcement of the extinction of the frontier line in 1890. 
The dramatic outcome of the Chicago Convention of 1896 
marked the rise into power of the representatives of Populistic 
change. Two years later came the battle of Manila, which 
broke down the old isolation of the nation, and started it on 
a path the goal of which no man can foretell; and finally, 
but two years ago came that concentration of which the billion 
and a half dollar steel trust and the union of the Northern 
continental railways are stupendous examples. Is it not 
obvious, then, that the student who seeks for the explanation 
of democracy in the social and economic forces that underlie 
political forms must make inquiry into the conditions that 
have produced our democratic institutions, if he would esti- 
mate the effect of these vast changes? As a contribution to 
this inquiry, let us now turn to an examination of the part 
that the West has played in shaping our democracy. 

From the beginning of the settlement of America, the fron- 
tier regions have exercised a steady influence toward democ- 
racy. In Virginia, to take an example, it can be traced as 
early as the period of Bacon's Rebellion, a hundred years 
before our Declaration of Independence. The small land- 
holders, seeing that their powers were steadily passing into 
the hands of the wealthy planters who controlled Church and 
State and lands, rose in revolt. A generation later, in the 
governorship of Alexander Spotswood, we find a contest 
between the frontier settlers and the property-holding classes 
of the coast. The democracy with which Spotswood had to 
struggle, and of which he so bitterly complained, was a democ- 
racy made up of small landholders, of the newer immigrants, 
and of indented servants, who at the expiration of their time 



24S THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

of servitude passed into the interior to take up lands and 
engage in pioneer farming. The " War of the Regulation," 
just on the eve of the American Revolution, shows the steady 
persistence of this struggle between the classes of the interior 
and those of the coast. The Declaration of Grievances which 
the back counties of the Carolinas then drew up against the 
aristocracy that dominated the politics of those colonies 
exhibits the contest between the democracy of the frontier and 
the established classes who apportioned the legislature in 
such fashion as to secure effective control of government. 
Indeed, in a period before the outbreak of the American Revo- 
lution, one can trace a distinct belt of democratic territory 
extending from the back country of New England down through 
western New York, Pennsylvania, and the South. ^ 

In each colony this region was in conflict with the dominant 
classes of the coast. It constituted a quasi-revolutionary area 
before the days of the Revolution, and it formed the basis on 
which the Democratic party was afterwards established. It 
was, therefore, in the West, as it was in the period before the 
Declaration of Independence, that the struggle for democratic 
development first revealed itself, and in that area the essential 
ideas of American democracy had already appeared. Through 
the period of the Revolution and of the Confederation a similar 
contest can be noted. On the frontier of New England, along 
the western border of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Caro- 
linas, and in the communities beyond the Alleghany Moun- 
tains, there arose a demand of the frontier settlers for inde- 
pendent statehood based on democratic provisions. There is 
a strain of fierceness in their energetic petitions demanding 
self-government under the theory that every people have the 
right to establish their own political institutions in an area 
which they have won from the wilderness. Those revolu- 

2 See chapter iii. 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 249 

tionary principles based on natural rights, for which the sea- 
board colonies were contending, were taken up with frontier 
energy in an attempt to apply them to the lands of the West. 
No one can read their petitions denouncing the control exer- 
cised by the wealthy landholders of the coast, appealing 
to the record of their conquest of the wilderness, and demand- 
ing the possession of the lands for which they have fought 
the Indians, and which they had reduced by their ax to 
civilization, without recognizing in these frontier communi- 
ties the cradle of a belligerent Western democracy. " A fool 
can sometimes put on his coat better than a wise man can do 
it for him," — such is the philosophy of its petitioners. In 
this period also came the contests of the interior agricultural 
portion of New England against the coast-wise merchants and 
property-holders, of which Shays' Rebellion is the best known, 
although by no means an isolated instance. 

By the time of the constitutional convention, this struggle for 
democracy had affected a fairly well-defined division into par- 
ties. Although these parties did not at first recognize their in- 
terstate connections, there were similar issues on which they 
split in almost all the States. The demands for an issue of 
paper money, the stay of execution against debtors, and the re- 
lief against excessive taxation were found in every colony in 
the interior agricultural regions. The rise of this significant 
movement wakened the apprehensions of the men of means, and 
in the debates over the basis of suffrage for the House of Rep- 
resentatives in the constitutional convention of 1787 leaders of 
the conservative party did not hesitate to demand that safe- 
guards to the properly should be furnished the coast against the 
interior. The outcome of the debate left the question of suf- 
frage for the House of Representatives dependent upon the pol- 
icy of the separate States. This was in effect imposing a prop- 
erty qualification throughout the nation as a whole, and it 



250 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

was only as the interior of the country developed that these 
restrictions gradually gave way in the direction of manhood 
suffrage. 

All of these scattered democratic tendencies Jefferson com- 
bined, in the period of Washington's presidency, into the 
Democratic-Republican party. Jefferson was the first prophet 
of American democracy, and when we analyse the essential 
features of his gospel, it is clear that the Western influence 
was the dominant element. Jefferson himself was born in the 
frontier region of Virginia, on the edge of the Blue Ridge, 
in the middle of the eighteenth century. His father was a 
pioneer. Jefferson's " Notes on Virginia " reveal clearly his 
conception that democracy should have an agricultural basis, 
and that manufacturing development and city life were dan- 
gerous to the purity of the body politic. Simplicity and 
economy in government, the right of revolution, the freedom 
of the individual, the belief that those who win the vacant 
lands are entitled to shape their own government in their own 
way, — these are all parts of the platform of political principles 
to which he gave his adhesion, and they are all elements emi- 
nently characteristic of the Western democracy into which he 
was born. 

In the period of the Revolution he had brought in a series 
of measures which tended to throw the power of Virginia 
into the hands of the settlers in the interior rather than of 
the coastwise aristocracy. The repeal of the laws of entail 
and primogeniture would have destroyed the great estates on 
which the planting aristocracy based its power. The aboli- 
tion of the Established Church would still further have dimin- 
ished the influence of the coastwise party in favor of the dis- 
senting sects of the interior. His scheme of general public 
education reflected the same tendency, and his demand for 
the abolition of slavery was characteristic of a representative 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 251 

of the West rather than of the old-time aristocracy of the 
coast. His sympathy with the Western expansion culminated 
in the Louisiana Purchase. In short, the tendencies of Jef- 
ferson's legislation were to replace the dominance of the 
planting aristocracy by the dominance of the interior class, 
which had sought in vain to achieve its liberties in the period 
of Bacon's Rebellion. 

Nevertheless, Thomas Jefferson was the John the Baptist 
of democracy, not its Moses. Only with the slow setting of 
the tide of settlement farther and farther toward the interior 
did the democratic influence grow strong enough to take actual 
possession of the government. The period from 1800 to 1820 
saw a steady increase in these tendencies. The established 
classes in New England and the South began to take alarm. 
Perhaps no better illustration of the apprehensions of the 
old-time Federal conservative can be given than these utter- 
ances of President Dwight, of Yale College, in the book of 
travels which he published in that period: — 

The class of pioneers cannot live in regular 
society. They are too idle, too talkative, too pas- 
sionate, too prodigal, and too shiftless to acquire 
either property or character. They are impatient 
of the restraints of law, religion, and morality, 
and grumble about the taxes by which the Rulers, 
Ministers, and Schoolmasters are supported. . . . 
After exposing the injustice of the community in 
neglecting to invest persons of such superior merit 
in public offices, in many an eloquent harangue 
uttered by many a kitchen fire, in every black- 
smith shop, in every corner of the streets, and 
finding all their efforts vain, they become at length 
discouraged, and under the pressure of poverty. 



252 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the fear of the gaol, and consciousness of public 
contempt, leave their native places and betake 
themselves to the wilderness. 

Such was a conservative's impression of that pioneer move- 
ment of New England colonists who had spread up the valley 
of the Connecticut into New Hampshire, Vermont, and west- 
ern New York in the period of which he wrote, and who 
afterwards went on to possess the Northwest. New England 
Federalism looked with a shudder at the democratic ideas 
of those who refused to recognize the established order. But 
in that period there came into the Union a sisterhood of fron- 
tier States — Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri — with pro- 
visions for the franchise that brought in complete democracy. 

Even the newly created States of the Southwest showed 
the tendency. The wind of democracy blew so strongly 
from the West, that even in the older States of New York, 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia, conventions were 
called, which liberalized their constitutions by strengthening 
the democratic basis of the State. In the same time the labor 
population of the cities began to assert its power and its 
determination to share in government. Of this frontier democ- 
racy which now took possession of the nation, Andrew Jack- 
son was the very personification. He was born in the back- 
woods of the Carolines in the midst of the turbulent democ- 
racy that preceded the Revolution, and he grew up in the 
frontier State of Tennessee. In the midst of this region of 
personal feuds and frontier ideals of law, he quickly rose to 
leadership. The appearance of this frontiersman on the floor 
of Congress was an omen full of significance. He reached 
Philadelphia at the close of Washington's administration, 
having ridden on horseback nearly eight hundred miles to 
his destination. Gallatin, himself a Western man, describes 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 253 

Jackson as he entered the halls of Congress: "A tall, lank, 
uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging 
over his face and a cue down his back tied in an eel-skin; 
his dress singular; his manners those of a rough backwoods- 
man." And Jefferson testified: "When I was President of 
the Senate he was a Senator, and he could never speak on 
account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him 
attempt it repeatedly and as often choke with rage." At last 
the frontier in the person of its typical man, had found a 
place in the Government. This six-foot backwoodsman, with 
blue eyes that could blaze on occasion, this choleric, impet- 
uous, self-willed Scotch-Irish leader of men, this expert duel- 
ist, and ready fighter, this embodiment of the tenacious, vehe- 
ment, personal West, was in politics to stay. The frontier 
democracy of that time had the instincts of the clansman in 
the days of Scotch border warfare. Vehement and tenacious 
as the democracy was, strenuously as each man contended with 
his neighbor for the spoils of the new country that opened 
before them, they all had respect for the man who best 
expressed their aspirations and their ideas. Every commu- 
nity had its hero. In the War of 1812 and the subsequent 
Indian fighting Jackson made good his claim, not only to the 
loyalty of the people of Tennessee, but of the whole West, 
and even of the nation. He had the essential traits of the 
Kentucky and Tennessee frontier. It was a frontier free from 
the influence of European ideas and institutions. The men 
of the " Western World " turned their backs upon the Atlantic 
Ocean, and with a grim energy and self-reliance began to 
build up a society free from the dominance of ancient forms. 
The Westerner defended himself and resented governmental 
restrictions. The duel and the blood-feud found congenial 
soil in Kentucky and Tennessee. The idea of the personality 
of law was often dominant over the organized machinery of 



254 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

justice. That method was best which was most direct and 
effective. The backwoodsman was intolerant of men who split 
hairs, or scrupled over the method of reaching the right. In 
a word, the unchecked development of the individual wa«i 
the significant product of this frontier democracy. It sought 
rather to express itself by choosing a man of the people, 
than by the formation of elaborate governmental institu- 
tions. 

It was because Andrew Jackson personified these essential 
Western traits that in his presidency he became the idol and 
the mouthpiece of the popular will. In his assault upon the 
Bank as an engine of aristocracy, and in his denunciation of 
nullification, he went directly to his object with the ruthless 
energy of a frontiersman. For formal law and the subleties 
of State sovereignty he had the contempt of a backwoodsman. 
Nor is it without significance that this typical man of the new 
democracy will always be associated with the triumph of the 
spoils system in national politics. To the new democracy 
of the West, office was an opportunity to exercise natural 
rights as an equal citizen of the community. Rotation in 
office served not simply to allow the successful man to punish 
his enemies and reward his friends, but it also furnished the 
training in the actual conduct of political affairs which every 
American claimed as his birthright. Only in a primitive 
democracy of the type of the United States in 1830 could such 
a system have existed without the ruin of the State. National 
government in that period was no complex and nicely adjusted 
machine, and the evils of the system were long in making 
themselves fully apparent. 

The triumph of Andrew Jackson marked the end of the old 
era of trained statesmen for the Presidency. With him began 
the era of the popular hero. Even Martin Van Buren, whom 
we think of in connection with the East, was born in a log 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 255 

house under conditions that were not unlike parts of the 
older West. Harrison was the hero of the Northwest, as 
Jackson had been of the Southwest. Polk was a typical 
Tennesseean, eager to expand the nation, and Zachary Taylor 
was what Webster called a " frontier colonel." During the 
period that followed Jackson, power passed from the region 
of Kentucky and Tennessee to the border of the Mississippi. 
The natural democratic tendencies that had earlier shown 
themselves in the Gulf States were destroyed, however, by 
the spread of cotton culture, and the development of great 
plantations in that region. What had been typical of the 
dem.ocracy of the Revolutionary frontier and of the frontier 
of Andrew Jackson was now to be seen in the States between 
the Ohio and the Mississippi. As Andrew Jackson is the 
typical democrat of the former region, so Abraham Lincoln 
is the very embodiment of the pioneer period of the Old 
Northwest. Indeed, he is the embodiment of the democracy 
of the West. How can one speak of him except in the words 
of Lowell's great " Commemoration Ode " : — 

" For him her Old- World moulds aside she threw, 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 

Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 

His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, 

Thi-usting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 

A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; 

Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined. 

Fruitful and friendly for all human kind. 

Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest start. 

Nothing of Europe here. 
Or, then, of Europe fronting momward still, 
Ere any names of Serf and Peer, 
Could Nature's equal scheme deface; 
New birth of our new soil, the first American." 



256 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

The pioneer life from which Lincoln came differed in impor- 
tant respects from the frontier democracy typified by Andrew 
Jackson. Jackson's democracy was contentious, individualis- 
tic, and it sought the ideal of local self-government and expan- 
sion. Lincoln represents rather the pioneer folk who entered 
the forest of the great Northwest to chop out a home, to build 
up their fortunes in the midst of a continually ascending indus- 
trial movement. In the democracy of the Southwest, indus- 
trial development and city life were only minor factors, but 
to the democracy of the Northwest they were its very life. 
To widen the area of the clearing, to contend v/ith one another 
for the mastery of the industrial resources of the rich prov- 
inces, to struggle for a place in the ascending movement of 
society, to transmit to one's offspring the chance for educa- 
tion, for industrial betterment, for the rise in life which the 
hardships of the pioneer existence denied to the pioneer him- 
self, these were some of the ideals of the region to which Lin- 
coln' came. The men were commonwealth builders, industry 
builders. Whereas the type of hero in the Southwest was 
militant, in the Northwest he was industrial. It was in the 
midst of these " plain people," as he loved to call them, that 
Lincoln grew to manhood. As Emerson says: " He is the true 
history of the American people in his time." The years of 
his early life were the years when the democracy of the North- 
west came into struggle with the institution of slavery which 
threatened to forbid the expansion of the democratic pioneer 
life in the West. In President Eliot's essay on " Five Ameri- 
can Contributions to Civilization," he instances as one of the 
supreme tests of American democracy its attitude upon the 
question of slavery. But if democracy chose wisely and 
worked effectively toward the solution of this problem, it 
must be reniembered that Western democracy took the lead. 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 257 

The rail-splitter himself became the nation's President in that 
fierce time of struggle, and armies of the woodsmen and pio- 
neer farmers recruited in the Old Northwest made free the 
Father of Waters, marched through Georgia, and helped to 
force the struggle to a conclusion at Appomattox. The free 
pioneer democracy struck down the slave-holding aristocracy 
on its march to the West. 

The last chapter in the development of Western democracy 
is the one that deals with its conquest over the vast spaces 
of the new West. At each new stage of Western development, 
the people have had to grapple with larger areas, with bigger 
combinations. The little colony of Massachusetts veterans 
that settled at Marietta received a land grant as large as tlie 
State of Rhode Island. The band of Connecticut pioneers that 
followed Moses Cleaveland to the Connecticut Reserve occu- 
pied a region as large as the parent State. The area which 
settlers of New England stock occupied on the prairies of 
northern Illinois surpassed the combined area of Massachu- 
setts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Men who had become 
accustomed to the narrow valleys and the little towns of the 
East found themselves out on the boundless spaces of the 
West dealing with units of such magnitude as dwarfed their 
former experience. The Great Lakes, the Prairies, the Great 
Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Mississippi and the Missouri, 
furnished new standards of measurement for the achievement 
of this industrial democracy. Individualism began to give 
way to cooperation and to governmental activity. Even in the 
earlier days of the democratic conquest of the wilderness, 
demands had been m.ade upon the government for support in 
internal improvements, but this new West showed a growing 
tendency to call to its assistance the powerful arm of national 
authority. In the period since the Civil War, the vast public 



258 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

domain has been donated to the individual farmer, to States 
for education, to railroads for the construction of transporta- 
tion lines. 

Moreover, with the advent of democracy in the last fif- 
teen years upon the Great Plains, new physical conditions 
have presented themselves which have accelerated the social 
tendency of Western democracy. The pioneer farmer of 
the days of Lincoln could place his family on a flatboat, 
strike into the wilderness, cut out his clearing, and with little 
or no capital go on to the achievement of industrial independ- 
ence. Even the homesteader on the Western prairies found it 
possible to work out a similar independent destiny, although 
the factor of transportation made a serious and increasing 
impediment to the free working-out of his individual career. 
But when the arid lands and the mineral resources of the 
Far West were reached, no conquest was possible by the old 
individual pioneer methods. Here expensive irrigation works 
must be constructed, cooperative activity was demanded in 
utilization of the water supply, capital beyond the reach of the 
small farmer was required. In a word, the physiographic 
province itself decreed that the destiny of this new frontier 
should be social rather than individual. 

Magnitude of social achievement is the watchword of the 
democracy since the Civil War. From petty towns built in the 
marshes, cities arose whose greatness and industrial power 
are the wonder of our time. The conditions were ideal for 
the production of captains of industry. The old democratic 
admiration for the self-made man, its old deference to the 
rights of competitive individual development, together with 
the stupendous natural resources that opened to the conquest 
of the keenest and the strongest, gave such conditions of 
mobility as enabled the development of the large corporate in- 
dustries which in our own decade have marked the West. 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 259 

Thus, in brief, have been outlined the chief phases of the 
development of Western democracy in the different areas 
which it has conquered. There has been a steady develop- 
ment of the industrial ideal, and a steady increase of the 
social tendency, in this later movement of Western democ- 
racy. While the individualism of the frontier, so prominent 
in the earliest days of the Western advance, has been pre- 
served as an ideal, more and more these individuals strug- 
gling each with the other, dealing with vaster and vaster 
areas, with larger and larger problems, have found it neces- 
sary to combine under the leadership of the strongest. This 
is the explanation of the rise of those preeminent captains of 
industry whose genius has concentrated capital to control the 
fundamental resources of the nation. If now in the way of 
recapitulation, we try to pick out from the influences that 
have gone to the making of Western democracy the factors 
which constitute the net result of this movement, we shall 
have to mention at least the following: — 

Most important of all has been the fact that an area of 
free land has continually lain on the western border of the 
settled area of the United States. Whenever social conditions \ 
tended to crystallize in the East, whenever capital tended to 
press upon labor or political restraints to impede the freedom 
of the mass, there was this gate of escape to the free conditions 
of the frontier. These free lands promoted individualism, 
economic equality, freedom to rise, democracy. Men would 
not accept inferior wages and a perm.anent position of social 
subordination when this promised land of freedom and equal- 
ity was theirs for the taking. ; Who would rest content under 
oppressive legislative conditions when with a slight effort he 
might reach a land wherein to become a co-worker in the 
building of free cities and free States on the lines of his 
own ideal? In a word, then, free lands meant free oppor- 



260 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

tunities. Their existence has differentiated the American 
democracy from the democracies which have preceded it, 
because ever, as democracy in the East took the form of highly 
specialized and complicated industrial society, in the West it 
kept in touch with primitive conditions, and by action and 
reaction these two forces have shaped our history. 

In the next place, these free lands and this treasury of indus- 
trial resources have existed over such vast spaces that they 
have demanded of democracy increasing spaciousness of design 
and power of execution. Western democracy is contrasted 
with the democracy of all other times in the largeness of the 
tasks to which it has set its hand, and in the vast achievements 
which it has wrought out in the control of nature and of 
politics. It would be diGicult to over-emphasize the import- 
ance of this training upon democracy. Never before in the 
history of the world has a democracy existed on so vast an 
area and handled things in the gross with such success, with 
such largeness of design, and such grasp upon the means of 
execution. In short, democracy has learned in the West of 
the United States how to deal with the problem of magnitude. 
The old historic democracies were but little states with prim- 
itive economic condiLions. 

But the very task of dealing with vast resources, over vast 
areas, under the conditions of free competition furnished by 
the West, has produced the rise of those captains of industry 
whose success in consolidating economic power now raises 
the question as to whether democracy under such conditions 
can survive. For the old military type of Western leaders 
like George Rogers Clark, Andrew Jackson, and William Henry 
Harrison have been substituted such industrial leaders as 
James J. Hill, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie. 

The question is imperative, then, Wliat ideals persist from 
this democratic experience of the West; and have they acquired 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 261 

sufficient momentum to sustain themselves under conditions so 
radically unlike those in the days of their origin? In other 
words, the question put at the beginning of this discussion 
becomes pertinent. Under the forms of the American democ- 
racy is there in reality evolving such a concentration of eco- 
nomic and social power in the hands of a comparatively few 
men as may make political democracy an appearance rather 
than a reality? The free lands are gone. The material forces 
that gave vitality to Western democracy are passing away. It 
is to the realm of the spirit, to the domain of ideals and legis- 
lation, that we must look for Western influence upon democ- 
racy in our own days. 

Western democracy has been from the time of its birth 
idealistic. The very fact of the wilderness appealed to men 
as a fair, blank page on which to write a new chapter in tlie 
siory of man's struggle for a higher type of society. The 
Western wilds, from the Alleghanies to the Pacific, consti- 
tuted the richest free gift that was ever spread out before 
civilized man. To the peasant and artisan of the Old World, 
bound by the chains of social class, as old as custom and as 
inevitable as fate, the West offered an exit into a free life 
and greater well-being among the bounties of nature, into 
the midst of resources that demanded manly exertion, and 
that gave in return the chance for indefinite ascent in the 
scale of social advance. " To each she offered gifts after his 
will." Never again can such an opportunity come to the 
sons of men. It was unique, and the thing is so near us, so 
much a part of our lives, that we do not even yet comprehend 
its full significance. The existence of this land of opportu- 
nity has made Am.erica the goal of idealists from the days 
of the Pilgrim Fathers. With all the materialism of the 
pioneer movements, this idealistic conception of the vacant 
lands as an opportunity for a new order of things is unmis- 



262 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

takably present. Kipling's " Song of the English " has given 
it expression:- — 

"We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town; 
We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down. 
Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need, 
Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead. 
As the deer breaks — as the steer breaks — from the herd where they 

graze, 
In the faith of little children we went on our ways. 
Then the wood failed — then the food failed — then the last water dried — 
In the faith of little children we lay dov/n and died. 

" On the sand-drift — on the veldt-side — in the fern-scrub we lay. 
That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way. 
Follow after — follow after! We have watered the root 
And the bud has come to blossom that ripens for fruit! 
FoUow after — we are waiting by the trails that we lost 
For the sound of many footsteps, for the tread of a host. 

"Follow after — follow after — for the harvest is sown: 
By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own! " 

This was the vision that called to Roger Williams, — that 
" prophetic soul ravished of truth disembodied," " unable to 
enter into treaty with its environment," and forced to seek 
the wilderness. " Oh, how sweet," wrote William Penn, from 
his forest refuge, " is the quiet of these parts, freed from the 
troubles and perplexities of woeful Europe." And here he 
projected what he called his " Holy Experiment in Govern- 
ment." 

If the later West offers few such striking illustrations of 
the relation of the wilderness to idealistic schemes, and if 
some of the designs were fantastic and abortive, none the 
less the influence is a fact. Hardly a Western State but has 
been the Mecca of some sect or band of social reformers, 
anxious to put into practice their ideals, in vacant land, far 
removed from the checks of a settled form of social organiza- 



/ 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 263 

tion. Consider the Dunkards, the Icarians, the Fourierists, 
the Mormons, and similar idealists who sought our Western 
wilds. But the idealistic influence is not limited to the 
dreamers' conception of a new State. It gave to the pioneer 
farmer and city builder a restless energy, a quick capacity 
for judgment and action, a belief in liberty, freedom of oppor- 
tunity, and a resistance to the domination of class which 
infused a vitality and power into the individual atoms of this 
democratic mass. Even as he dwelt among the stumps of his 
newly-cut clearing, the pioneer had the creative vision of a new 
order of society. In imagination he pushed back the forest 
boundary to the confines of a mighty Commonwealth; he willed 
that log cabins should become the lofty buildings of great 
cities. He decreed that his children should enter into a herit- 
age of education, comfort, and social welfare, and for this 
ideal he bore the scars of the wilderness. Possessed with this 
idea he ennobled his task and laid deep foundations for a 
democratic State. Nor was this idealism by any means lim- 
ited to the American pioneer. 

To the old native democratic stock has been added a vast 
army of recruits from the Old World. There are in the 
Middle West alone four million persons of German parentage 
out of a total of seven millions in the country. Over a million 
persons of Scandinavian parentage live in the same region. 
The dem.ocracy of the newer West is deeply affected by the 
ideals brought by these immigrants from the Old World. To 
them America was not simply a new home; it was a land of 
opportunity, of freedom, of democracy. It meant to them, 
as to the American pioneer that preceded them, the oppoi- 
tunity to destroy the bonds of social caste that bound them in 
their older home, to hew out for themselves in a new country 
a destiny proportioned to the powers that God had given them, 
a chance to place their families under better conditions and 



264 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

to win a larger life than the life that they had left behind. 
He who believes that even the hordes of recent immigrants 
from southern Italy are drawn to these shores by nothing more 
than a dull and blind materialism has not penetrated into the 
heart of the problem. The idealism and expectation of these 
children of the Old World, the hopes which they have formed 
for a newer and freer life across the seas, are almost pathetic 
when one considers how far they are from the possibility of 
fruition. He who would take stock of American democracy 
must not forget the accumulation of human purposes and 
ideals which immigration has added to the American popu- 
lace. 

In this connection it must also be remembered that these 
democratic ideals have existed at each stage of the advance 
of the frontier, and have left behind them deep and enduring 
effects on the thinking of the whole country. Long after the 
frontier period of a particular region of the United States 
has passed away, the conception of society, the ideals and 
aspirations which it produced, persist in the minds of the 
people. So recent has been the transition of the greater por- 
tion of the United States from frontier conditions to condi- 
ditions of settled life, that we are, over the large portion of 
the United States, hardly a generation removed from the 
primitive conditions of the West. If, indeed, we ourselves 
were not pioneers, our fathers were, and the inherited ways 
of looking at things, the fundamental assumptions of the 
American people, have all been shaped by this experience of 
democracy on its westward march. This experience has been 
wrought into the very warp and woof of American thought. / 

Even those masters of industry and capital who have risen 
to power by the conquest of Western resources came from 
the midst of this society and still profess its principles. John 
D. Rockefeller was born on a New York farm, and began 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 265 

his career as a young business man in St. Louis. Marcus 
Hanna was a Cleveland grocer's clerk at the age of twenty. 
Claus Spreckles, the sugar king, came from Germany as a 
steerage passenger to the United States in 1848. Marshall 
Field was a farmer boy in Conway, Massachusetts, until he 
left to grow up with the young Chicago. Andrew Carnegie 
came as a ten-year-old boy from Scotland to Pittsburgh, then 
a distinctively Western town. He built up his fortunes through 
successive grades until he became the dominating factor in 
the great iron industries, and paved the way for that colossal 
achievement, the Steel Trust. Whatever may be the tenden- 
cies of this corporation, there can be little doubt of the demo- 
cratic ideals of Mr. Carnegie himself. With lavish hand he 
has strewn millions through the United States for the promo- 
tion of libraries. The effect of this library movement in 
perpetuating the democracy that comes from an intelligent 
and self-respecting people can hardly be measured. In his 
" Triumphant Democracy," published in 1886, Mr. Carnegie, 
the ironmaster, said, in reference to the mineral wealth of the 
United States: "Thank God, these treasures are in the hands 
of an intelligent people, the Democracy, to be used for the 
general good of the masses, and not made the spoils of mon- 
archs, courts, and aristocracy, to be turned to the base and 
selfish ends of a privileged hereditary class." It would be 
hard to find a more rigorous assertion of democratic doctrine 
than the celebrated utterance, attributed to the same man, 
that he should feel it a disgrace to die rich. 

In enumerating the services of American democracy. Presi- 
dent Eliot included the corporation as one of its achievements, 
declaring that " freedom of incorporation, though no longer 
exclusively a democratic agency, has given a strong support 
to democratic institutions." In one sense this is doubtless 
true, since the corporation has been one of the means by 



266 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

which small properties can be aggregated into an effective 
working body. Socialistic writers have long been fond of 
pointing out also that these various concentrations pave the 
way for and make possible social control. From this point 
of view it is possible that the masters of industry may prove 
to be not so much an incipient aristocracy as the pathfinders 
for democracy in reducing the industrial world to systematic 
consolidation suited to democratic control. The great geniuses 
that have built up the modern industrial concentration were 
trained in the midst of democratic society. They were the 
product of these democratic conditions. Freedom to rise was 
the very condition of their existence. Whether they will be 
followed by successors who will adopt the exploitation of the 
masses, and who will be capable of retaining under efficient 
control these vast resources, is one of the questions which we 
shall have to face. 

This, at least, is clear: American democracy is fundamen- 
tally the outcome of the experiences of the American people 
in dealing with the West. Western democracy through the 
whole of its earlier period tended to the production of a 
society of which the most distinctive fact was the freedom 
of the individual to rise under conditions of social mobility, 
and whose ambition was the liberty and well-being of the 
masses. This conception has vitalized all American democ- 
racy, and has brought it into sharp contrasts with the democ- 
racies of history, and with those modern eiTorts of Europe to 
create an artificial democratic order by legislation. The prob- 
lem of the United States is not to create democracy, but to 
conserve democratic institutions and ideals. In the later 
period of its development. Western democracy has been gain- 
ing experience in the problem of social control. It has stead- 
ily enlarged the sphere of its action and the instruments for 
its perpetuation. By its system of public schools, from the 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AxMERICAN DEMOCRACY 267 

grades to the graduate work of the great universities, the West 
has created a larger single body of intelligent plain people 
than can be found elsewhere in the world. Its political tend- 
encies, whetlier we consider Democracy, Populism, or Repub- 
licanism, are distinctly in the direction of greater social con- 
trol and the conservation of the old democratic ideals. 

To these ideals the West adheres with even a passionate 
determination. If, in working out its mastery of the re- 
sources of the interior, it has produced a type of industrial 
leader so powerful as to be the wonder of the world, never- 
theless, it is still to be determined whether these men consti- 
tute a menace to democratic institutions, or the most efficient 
factor for adjusting democratic control to the new conditions. 

Whatever shall be the outcome of the rush of this huge indus- 
trial modern United States to its place among the nations of 
the earth, the formation of its Western democracy will always 
remain one of the wonderful chapters in the history of the 
human race. Into this vast shaggy continent of ours poured 
ihe first feeble tide of European settlement. European men, 
institutions, and ideas were lodged in the American wilderness, 
and this great American West took them to her bosom, taught 
them a new way of looking upon the destiny of the common 
man, trained them in adaptation to the conditions of the New 
World, to the creation of new institutions to meet new needs; 
and ever as society on her eastern border grew to resemble 
the Old World in its social forms and its industry, ever, as it 
began to lose faith in the ideals of democracy, she opened 
new provinces, and dowered new democracies in her most dis- 
tant domains with her material treasures and with the enno- 
bling influence that the fierce love of freedom, the strength that 
came from hewing out a home, making a school and a church, 
and creating a higher future for his family, furnished to the 
pioneer. 



268 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

She gave to the world such types as the farmer Thomas 
Jefferson, with his Declaration of Independence, his statute 
for religious toleration, and his purchase of Louisiana. She 
gave us Andrew Jackson, that fierce Tennessee spirit who 
broke down the traditions of conservative rule, swept away the 
privacies and privileges of officialdom, and, like a Gothic 
leader, opened the temple of the nation to the populace. 
She gave us Abraham Lincoln, whose gaunt frontier form 
and gnarled, massive hand told of the conflict with the forest, 
whose grasp of the ax-handle of the pioneer was no firmer 
than his grasp of the helm of the ship of state as it breasted 
the seas of civil war. She has furnished to this new democ- 
racy her stores of mineral wealth, that dwarf of those of the 
Old World, and her provinces that in themselves are vaster 
and more productive than m.ost of the nations of Europe. 
Out of her bounty has come a nation v/hose industrial com- 
petition alarms the Old World, and the masters of whose 
resources wield wealth and power vaster than the wealth and 
power of kings. Best of all, the West gave, not only to the 
American, but to the unhappy and oppressed of all lands, a 
vision of hope, and assurance that the world held a place 
where were to be found high faith in man and the will and 
power to furnish him the opportunity to grow to the full meas- 
ure of his own capacity. Great and powerful as are the new 
sons of her loins, the Republic is greater than they. The 
paths of the pioneer have widened into broad highways. The 
forest clearing has expanded into affluent commonwealths. 
Let us see to it that the ideals of the pioneer in his log cabin 
shall enlarge into the spiritual life of a democracy where 
civic power shall dominate and utilize individual achievement 
for the common good. 



X 

Pioneer Ideals and the State University^ 

The ideals of a people, their aspirations and convictions, 
their hopes and ambitions, their dreams and determinations, 
are assets in their civilization as real and important as per 
capita wealth or industrial skill. 

This nation was formed under pioneer ideals. During three 
centuries after Captain John Smith struck the first blow at 
the American forest on the eastern edge of the continent, the 
pioneers were abandoning settled society for the wilderness, 
seeking, for generation afler generation, new frontiers. Their 
experiences left abiding influences upon the ideas and purposes 
of the nation. Indeed the older settled regions themselves 
were shaped profoundly by the very fact that the whole nation 
was pioneering and that in the development of the West the 
East had its own part. 

The first ideal of the pioneer was that of conquest. It was 
his task to fight with nature for the chance to exist. Not as 
in older countries did this contest take place in a mythical 
past, told in folk lore and epic. It has been continuous to 
our own day. Facing each generation of pioneers was the 
unmastered continent. Vast forests blocked the way; moun- 
tainous ramparts interposed; desolate, grass-clad prairies, 
barren oceans of rolling plains, arid deserts, and a fierce race 
of savages, all had to be met and defeated. The rifle and the 
ax are the symbols of the backAvoods pioneer. They meant 

^ Commencement Address at the University of Indiana, 1910. 

269 



270 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

a training in aggressive courage, in domination, in directness 
of action, in destructiveness. 

To the pioneer the forest was no friendly resource for pos- 
terity, no object of careful economy. He must wage a hand- 
to-hand war upon it, cutting and burning a little space to let 
in the light upon a dozen acres of hard-won soil, and year 
after year expanding the clearing into new woodlands againsl 
the stubborn resistance of primeval trunks and matted roots. 
He made war against the rank fertility of the soil. Wliile 
new worlds of virgin land lay ever just beyond, it was idle 
to expect the pioneer to stay his hand and turn to scientific 
farming. Indeed, as Secretary Wilson has said, the pioneer 
would, in that case, have raised wheat that no one wanted to 
eat, corn to store on the farm, and cotton not worth the pick- 
ing- 

Thus, fired with the ideal of subduing the wilderness, the 
destroying pioneer fought his way across the continent, mas- 
terful and wasteful, preparing the way by seeking the imme- 
diate thing, rejoicing in rude strength and wilful achieve- 
ment. 

Eut even this backwoodsman was more than a mere destroyer. 
He had visions. He was finder as well as fighter — the trail- 
maker for civilization, the inventor of new ways. Although 
Rudyard Kipling's " Foreloper " ^ deals with the English pio- 
neer in lands beneath the Southern Cross, yet the poem portrays 
American traits as well: 

" The gull shall whistle in his wake, the blind wave break m fire, 
He shall fulfill God's utmost will, unknowing his desire; 
And he shall see old planets pass and alien stars arise. 
And give the gale his reckless sail in shadow of new skies. 

2 [Printed from an earlier version; since published in his "Songs 

from Books," p. 93, under the title, " The Voortrekker." Even fuller of 

insight into the idealistic side of the frontier, is his " Explorer," in 
" Collected Verse," p. 19.] 



PIONEER IDEALS 271 

" Strong lust of gear shall drive him out and hunger arm his hand 

To \\Ting food from desert nude, his foothold from the sand. 

His neighbors' smoke shall vex his eyes, their voices break his rest; 

Ke^shall go forth till south is north, sullen and dispossessed; 

ile 'shall desire loneliness and his desire shall bring 

Hard on his heels, a thousand wheels, a people and a king. 

" He shall come back on his own track, and by his scarce cool camp, 
There shall he meet the roaring street, the derrick and the stamp; 
For he must blaze a nation's way with hatchet and whh brand. 
Till on his last won wilderness an empire's bulwarks stand." 

This quest after the unknown, this yearning " beyond the 
sky line, where the strange roads go down," is of the very 
essence of the backwoods pioneer, even though he was uncon- 
scious of its spiritual significance. 

The pioneer was taught in the school of experience that the 
crops of one area would not do for a new frontier; that the 
scythe of the clearing must be replaced by the reaper of the 
prairies. He was forced to make old tools serve new uses; 
to shape former habits, institutions and ideas to changed con- 
ditions; and to find new means when the old proved inapplic- 
able. He was building a new society as well as breaking 
new soil; he had the ideal of nonconformity and of change. 
He rebelled against the conventional. 

Besides the ideals of conquest and o*T discovery, the pioneer 
had the ideal of personal development, free from social and 
governmental constraint. He came from a civilization based 
on individual competition, and he brought the conception with 
him to the wilderness v^^here a wealth of resources, and innu- 
merable opportunities gave it a new scope. The prizes were 
for the keenest and the strongest; for them were the best 
bottom lands, the finest timber tracts, the best salt-springs, 
the richest ore beds; and not only these natural gifts, but 
also the opportunities afforded in the midst of a forming 
society. Here were mill sites, town sites, transportation lines, 



272 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

banking centers, openings in the law, in politics — all tlie 
varied chances for advancement afforded in a rapidly develop- 
ing society where everything was open to him who knew how 
to seize the opportunity. 

The squatter enforced his claim to lands even against the 
government's title by the use of extra-legal combinations and 
force. He appealed to lynch law with little hesitation. He 
was impatient of any governmental restriction upon his indi- 
vidual right to deal with the wilderness. 

In our own day we sometimes hear of congressmen sent to 
jail for violating land laws; but the different spirit in the 
pioneer days may be illustrated by a speech of Delegate Sib- 
ley of Minnesota in Congress in 1852. In view of the fact 
that he became the State's first governor, a regent of its univer- 
sity, president of its historical society, and a doctor of laws 
of Princeton, we may assume that he was a pillar of society. 
He said: 

The government has watched its public domain 
with jealous eye, and there are now enactments 
upon your statute books, aimed at the trespassers 
upon it, which should be expunged as a disgrace 
to the country and to the nineteenth century. 
Especially is he pursued with unrelenting severity, 
who has dared to break the silence of the pri- 
meval forest by the blows of the Am.erican ax. The 
hardy lumberman who has penetrated to the 
remotest wilds of the Northwest, to drag from their 
recesses the materials for building up towns and 
cities in the great valley of the Mississippi, has 
been particularly marked out as a victim. After 
enduring all the privations and subjecting himself 
to all the perils incident to his vocation — when 



PIONEER IDEALS 273 

he has toiled for months to add by his honest labor 
to the comfort of his fellow men, and to the aggre- 
gate wealth of the nation, he finds himself sud- 
denly in the clutches of the law for trespassing on 
the public domain. The proceeds of his long win- 
ter's work are reft from him, and exposed to pub- 
lic sale for the benefit of his paternal govern- 
ment . . . and the object of this oppression and 
wrong is further harassed by vexatious law pro- 
ceedings against him. 

Sibley's protest in congress against these " outrages " by 
which the northern lumbermen were " harassed " in their 
work of what would now be called stealing government tim- 
ber, aroused no protest from his colleagues. No president 
called this congressman an undesirable citizen or gave him 
over to the courts. 

Thus many of the pioneers, following the ideal of the right 
of the individual to rise, subordinated the rights of the nation 
and posterity to the desire that the country should be " devel- 
oped " and that the individual should advance with as little 
interference as possible. Squatter doctrines and individual- 
ism have left deep traces upon American conceptions. 

But quite as deeply fixed in the pioneer's mind as the ideal 
of individualism was the ideal of democracy. He had a pas- 
sionate hatred for aristocracy, monopoly and special priv- 
ilege; he believed in simplicity, economy and in the rule of 
the people. It is true that he honored the successful man, 
and that he strove in all ways to advance himself. But the 
West was so free and so vast, the barriers to individual achieve- 
ment were so remote, that the pioneer was hardly conscious 
that any danger to equality could come from his competition 
for natural resources. He thought of democracy as in some 



274 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

way the result of our political institutions, and he failed to 
see that it was primarily the result of the free lands and 
immense opportunities which surrounded him.- Occasional 
statesmen voiced the idea that American democracy was based 
on the abundance of unoccupied land, even in the first debates 
on the public domain. 

This early recognition of the influence of abundance of land 
in shaping the economic conditions of American democracy 
is peculiarly significant to-day in view of the practical exhaus- 
tion of the supply of cheap arable public lands open to the 
poor man, and the coincident development of labor unions to 
keep up wages. 

Certain it is that the strength of democratic movements 
has chiefly lain in the regions of the pioneer. " Our gov- 
ernments tend too much to democracy," wrote Izard, of South 
Carolina, to Jefferson, in 1785. " A handicraftsman thinks 
an apprenticeship necessary to make him acquainted with his 
business. But our backcountrymen are of the opinion that a 
politician may be born just as well as a poet." 

The Revolutionary ideas, of course, gave a great impetus 
to democracy, and in substantially every colony there was a 
double revolution, one for independence and the other for 
the overthrow of aristocratic control. , But in the long run 
the effective force behind American democracy was the pres- 
ence of the practically free land into which men might escape 
from oppression or inequalities which burdened them in the 
older settlements. // This possibility compelled 1:he coastwise 
States to liberalize the franchise; and it prevented the forma- 
tion of a dominant class, whether based on property or on 
custom. Among the pioneers one man was as good as his 
neighbor. He had the same chance; conditions were simple 
and free. Economic equality fostered political equality. An 
optimistic and buoyant belief in the worth of the plain people. 



PIONEER IDEALS 275 

a devout faith in man prevailed in the West. Democracy be- 
came almost the religion of the pioneer. He held with pas- 
sionate devotion the idea that he was building under free- 
dom a new society, based on self government, and for the 
welfare of the average man. 

And yet even as he proclaimed the gospel of democracy 
the pioneer showed a vague apprehension lest the time be 
short — lest equality should not endure — lest he might fall 
behind in the ascending movement of Western society. This 
led him on in feverish haste to acquire advantages as though 
he only half believed his dream. " Before him lies a bound- 
less continent," wrote De Tocqueville, in the days when pioneer 
democracy was triumphant under Jackson, " and he urges for- 
v/ard as if time pressed and he was afraid of finding no room 
for his exertions." 

Even while Jackson lived, labor leaders and speculative 
thinkers were demanding legislation to place a limit on the 
amount of land which one person might acquire and to provide 
free farms. De Tocqueville saw the signs of change. 
" Between the workman and the master," he said, " there are 
frequent relations but no real association. ... I am of the 
opinion, upon the whole, that the manufacturing aristocracy 
which is growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest 
which ever existed in the world; ... if ever a permanent 
inequality, of conditions and aristocracy again penetrate into 
the world, it may be predicted that this is the gate by which 
they will enter." But the sanative influences of the free spaces 
of the West were destined to ameliorate labor's condition, to 
aff"ord new hopes and new faith to pioneer democracy, and to 
postpone the problem. 

As the settlers advanced into provinces whose area dwarfed 
that of the older sections, pioneer democracy itself began to 
undergo changes, both in its composition and in its processes 



276 THE FRONTIER IN Ai\iERICAN HISTORY 

of expansion. At the close of the Civil War, when settlement 
was spreading with greatest vigor across the Mississippi, the 
railways began their work as colonists. Their land grants 
from the government, amounting altogether by 1871 to an area 
five times that of the State of Pennsylvania, demanded pur- 
chasers, and so the railroads pioneered the way for the pioneer. 

The homestead law increased the tide of settlers. The 
improved farm machinery made it possible for him to go 
boldly out on to the prairie and to deal effectively with virgin 
soil in farms wnose cultivated area made the old clearings of 
the backwoodsman seem mere garden plots. Two things 
resulted from these conditions, which profoundly modified 
pioneer ideals. In the first place the new form of coloniza- 
tion demanded an increasing use of capital; and the rapidity 
of the formation of towns, the speed with which society devel- 
oped, made men the more eager to secure bank credit to deal 
v/ith the new West. This made the pioneer more dependent 
on the eastern economic forces. In the second place the farmer 
became dependent as never before on transportation com- 
panies. In this speculative m.ovement the railroads, finding 
that they had pressed too far in advance and had issued stock 
to freely for their earnings to justify the face of the invest- 
ment, came into collision with the pioneer on the question of 
rates and of discriminations. The Greenback movement and 
the Granger movements were appeals to government to prevent 
what the pioneer thought to be invasions of pioneer democ- 
racy. > 

As the western settler began to face the problem of mag- 
nitude in the areas he was occupying; as he began to ad- 
just his life to the modern forces of capital and to complex 
productive processes; as he began to see that, go where he 
would, the question of credit and currency, of transportation 
and distribution in general conditioned his success, he sought 



PIONEER IDEALS 277 

relief by legislation. He began to lose his primitive attitude 
of individualism, government began to look less like a neces- 
sary evil and more like an instrument for the perpetuation of 
his democratic ideals. In brief, the defenses of the pioneer 
democrat began to shift from free land to legislation, from 
the ideal of individualism to the ideal of social control 
through regulation by law. ; He had no sympathy with a rad- 
ical reconstruction of society by the revolution of socialism; 
even his alliances with the movement of organized labor, 
which paralleled that of organized capital in the East, were 
only half-hearted. But he was becoming alarmed over the 
future of the free democratic ideal. The wisdom of his legis- 
lation it is not necessary to discuss here. The essential point 
is that his conception of the right of government to control 
social process had undergone a change. He was coming to 
regard legislation as an instrument of social construction. 
The individualism of the Kentucky pioneer of 1796 v*^as giv- 
ing way to the Populism of the Kansas pioneer of 1896. 

The later days of pioneer democracy are too familiar to 
require much exposition. But they are profoundly signifi- 
cant. As the pioneer doctrine of free competition for the 
resources of the nation revealed its tendencies; as individual, 
corporation and trust, like the pioneer, turned increasingly to 
legal devices to promote their contrasting ideals, the natural 
resources were falling into private possession. Tides of alien 
immigrants were surging into the country to replace the old 
American stock in the labor market, to lower the standard of 
living and to increase the pressure of population upon the 
land. These recent foreigners have lodged almost exclusively 
in the dozen great centers of industrial life, and there they 
have accented the antagonisms between capital and labor by 
the fact that the labor supply has become increasingly foreign 
born, and recruited from nationalities who arouse no iym- 



278 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

pathy on the part of capital and little on the part of the gen- 
eral public. Class distinctions are accented by national preju- 
dices, and democracy is thereby invaded. But even in the 
dull brains of great masses of these unfortunates from south- 
ern and eastern Europe the idea of America as the land of 
freedom and of opportunity to rise, the land of pioneer demo- 
cratic ideals, has found lodgment, and if it is given time and 
is not turned into revolutionary lines it will fructify. 

As the American pioneer passed on in advance of this new 
tide of European immigration, he found lands increasingly 
limited. In place of the old lavish opportunity for the set- 
tler to set his stakes where he would, there were frantic rushes 
of thousands of eager pioneers across the line of newly opened 
Indian reservations. Even in 1889, when Oklahoma was' 
opened to settlement, twenty thousand settlers crowded at the 
boundaries, like straining athletes, waiting the bugle note that 
should start the race across the line. To-day great crowds 
gather at the land lotteries of the government as the remaining 
fragments of the public domain are flung to limigry set- 
tlers. 

Hundreds of thousands of pioneers from the Middle West 
have crossed the national boundary into Canadian wheat fields 
eager to find farms for their children, although under an 
alien flag. And finally the government has taken to itself 
great areas of arid land for reclamation by costly irrigation 
projects whereby to furnish twenty-acre tracts in the desert 
to settlers under careful regulation of water rights. The gov- 
ernment supplies the capital for huge irrigation dams and 
reservoirs and builds them itself. It owns and operates quar- 
ries, coal mines and timber to facilitate this work. It seeks 
the remotest regions of the earth for crops suitable for these 
areas. It analyzes the soils and tells the farmer what and 
when and how to plant. It has even considered the rental 



PIONEER IDEALS 279 

to manufacturers of the surplus water, electrical and steam 
power generated in its ii-rigation works and the utilization of 
this power to extract nitrates from the air to replenish worn- 
out soils, Tlie pioneer of the arid regions must be both a 
capitalist and the protege of the government. 

Consider the contrast between the conditions of the pioneers 
at the beginning and at the end of this period of development. 
Three hundred years ago adventurous Englishmen on the coast 
of Virginia began the attack on the wilderness. Three years 
ago the President of the United States summoned the governors 
of forty-six states to deliberate upon the danger of the exhaus- 
tion of the natural resources of the nation.^ 

The pressure of population upon the food supply is already 
felt and we are at the beginning only of this transformation. 
It is profoundly significant that at the very time when Amer- 
ican democracy is becoming conscious that its pioneer basis 
of free land and sparse population is giving way, it is also 
brought face to face with the startling outcome of its old 
ideals of individualism and exploitation under competition 
uncontrolled by government. Pioneer society itself was not 
sufficiently sophisticated to work out to its logical result the 
conception of the self-made man. But the captains of indus- 
try by applying squatter doctrines to the evolution of Amer- 
ican industrial society, have made the process so clear that 
he who runs may read. Contests imply alliances as well as 
rivalries. The increasing magnitude of the areas to be dealt 
with and the occurrences of times of industrial stress fur- 
nished occasion for such unions. The panic of 1873 was 
followed by an unprecedented combination of individual busi- 
nesses and partnerships into corporations. The panic of 1893 
marked the beginning of an extraordinary development of cor- 
porate combinations into pools and trusts, agreements and 

8 Written in 1910. 



280 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

absorptions, until, by the time of the panic of 1907, it seemed 
not impossible that the outcome of free competition under 
individualism was to be monopoly of the most important nat- 
ural resources and processes by a limited group of men whose 
vast fortunes were so invested in allied and dependent indus- 
tries that they constituted the dominating force in the indus- 
trial life of the nation. The development of large scale fac- 
tory production, the benefit of combination in the competitive 
struggle, and the tremendous advantage of concentration in 
securing possession of the unoccupied opportunities, were so 
great that vast accumulations of capital became the normal 
agency of the industrial world. In almost exact ratio to the 
diminution of the supply of unpossessed resources, combina- 
tions of capital have increased in magnitude and in eflSciency- 
of conquest. The solitary backwoodsman wiellding his ax at 
the edge of a measureless forest is replaced by companies 
capitalized at millions, operating railroads, sawmills, and all 
the enginery of modern machinery to harvest the remaining 
trees.* 

A new national development is before us without the former 
safety valve of abundant resources open to him who would 
take. Classes are becoming alarmingly distinct: There is the 
demand on the one side voiced by Mr. Harriman so well and 
by others since, that nothing must be done to interfere with 
the early pioneer ideals of the exploitation and the develop- 
ment of the country's wealth; that restrictive and reforming 
legislation must on no account threaten prosperity even for 
a moment. In fact, we sometimes hear in these days, from 
men of influence, serious doubts of democracy, and intima- 
tions that the country would be better off if it freely resigned 
itself to guidance by the geniuses who are mastering the eco- 
nomic forces of the nation, and who, it is alleged, would work 

* Omissions from the original are incorporated in later chapters. 



PIONEER IDEALS Wl 

out the prosperity of the United States more effectively, if 
unvexed by politicians and people. 

On the other hand, an inharmonious group of reformers are 
sounding the warning that American democratic ideals and 
society are menaced and already invaded by the very condi- 
tions that make this apparent prosperity; that the economic 
resources are no longer limitless and free; that the aggregate 
national wealth is increasing at the cost of present social 
justice and moral health, and the future well-being of the 
American people. The Granger and the Populist were 
prophets of this reform movement. Mr. Bryan's Democracy, 
Mr. Debs' Socialism, and Mr. Roosevelt's Republicanism all 
had in common the emphasis upon the need of governmental 
regulation of industrial tendencies in the interest of the common 
man; the checking of the power of those business Titans who 
emerged successful out of the competitive individualism of 
pioneer America. As land val'ies rise, as meat and bread 
grow dearer, as the process of industrial consolidation goes 
on, and as Eastern industrial conditions spread across the 
West, the problems of traditional American democracy will 
become increasingly grave. 

The time has come wlien University men may well consider 
pioneer ideals, for American society has reached the end of the 
first great period in its formation. It must survey itself, reflect 
upon its origins, consider what freightage of purposes it car- 
ried in its long march across the continent, v/hat ambitions it 
had for the man, what role it would play in the world. How 
shall we conserve what was best ^in pioneer ideals? How 
adjust the old conceptions to the changed conditions of mod- 
ern life? 

Other nations have been rich and prosperous and powerful. 
But the United States has believed that it had an original con- 
tribution to make to the history of society by the production 



282 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

of a self-determining, self-restrained, intelligent democracy. 
It is in the Pvliddle West that society has forn:ed on lines least 
like those of Europe. It is here, if anywhere, that American 
democracy will make its stand against the tendency to adjust to 
a European type. 

This consideration gives importance to my final topic, the 
relation of the University to pioneer ideals and to the chang- 
ing conditions of American democracy. President Pritchett 
of the Carnegie Foundation has recently declared that in no 
other form of popular activity does a nation or State so clearly 
reveal its ideals or the quality of its civilization as in its sys- 
tem of education; and he finds, especially in tlie State Uni- 
versity, " a conception of education from the standpoint of 
the whole people." " If our American democracy were to-day ' 
called to give proof of its constructive ability," he says, " the 
State University and the public school system which it crowns 
would be the strongest evidence of its fitness which it could 
offer." 

It may at least be conceded that an essential characteristic 
of the State University is its democracy in the largest sense. 
The provision in the Constitution of Indiana of 1816, so famil- 
iar to you all, for a " general system of education ascending in 
regular gradations from township schools to a State Univer- 
sity, wherein tuition shall be gratis and equally open to all," 
expresses the Middle Western conception born in the days of 
pioneer society and doubtless deeply influenced by Jeffersonian 
democracy. 

The most obvious fact about these universities, perhaps, lies 
in their integral relation with the public schools, whereby the 
pupil has pressed upon him the question whether he shall go 
to college, and whereby the road is made open and direct to 
the highest training. By this means the State offers to every 
class the means of education, and even engages in propaganda 



PIONEER IDEALS 283 

to induce students to continue. It sinks deep shafts through 
the social strata to find the gold of real ability in the underly- 
ing rock of the masses. It fosters that due degree of individ- 
ualism which is implied in the right of every human being 
to have opportunity to rise in whatever directions his peculiar 
abilities entitle him to go, subordinate to the welfare of the 
state. It keeps the avenues of promotion to the highest offices, 
the highest honors, open to the humblest and most obscure 
lad who has the natural gifts, at the same time that it aids 
in the improvement of the masses. 

Nothing in our educational history is more striking than 
the steady pressure of democracy upon its universities to adapt 
them to the requirements of all the people. From the State 
Universities of the Middle West, shaped under pioneer ideals, 
have come the fuller recognition of scientific studies, and espe- 
cially those of applied science devoted to the conquest of 
nature; the breaking down of the traditional required curric- 
ulum; the union of vocational and college work in the same 
institution; the development of agricultural and engineering 
colleges and business courses; the training of lawyers, admin- 
istrators, public men, and journalists — all under the ideal of 
service to democracy rather than of individual advancement 
alone. Other universities do tlie same thing; but the head 
springs and the main current of this great stream of tendency 
come from the land of the pioneers, the democratic states of 
the Middle West. And the people themselves, through their 
boards of trustees and the legislature, are in the last resort the 
court of appeal as to the directions and conditions of growth, 
as well as have the fountain of income from which these 
universities derive their existence. 

The State University has thus both a peculiar power in the 
directness of its influence upon the whole people and a pecul- 
iar limitation in its dependence upon the people. The 



284 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

ideals of the people constitute the atmosphere in which il 
moves, though it can itself affect this atmosphere. Herein 
is the source of its strength and the direction of its difficulties. 
For to fulfil its mission of uplifting the state to continuously 
higher levels the University must, in the words of Mr. Bryce, 
" serve the time without yielding to it; " it must recognize new 
needs without becoming subordinate to the immediately prac- 
tical, to the shoj-t-sightedly expedient. It must not sacrifice 
the higher efficiency for the more obvious but lower efficiency. 
It must have the wisdom to make expenditures for results 
which pay manifold in the enrichment of civilization, but 
which are not immediate and palpable. 

In the transitional condition of American democracy which 
I have tried to indicate, the mission of the university is most 
important. The times call for educated leaders. General 
experience and rule-of-thumb information are inadequate for 
the solution of the problems of a democracy which no longer 
owns the safety fund of an unlimited quantity of untouched 
resources. Scientific farming must increase the yield of 
the field, scientific forestry must economize the woodlands, 
scientific experiment and construction by chemist, physicist, 
biologist and engineer must be applied to all of nature's 
forces in our complex modern society. The test tube and the 
microscope are needed rather than ax and rifle in this new 
ideal of conquest. The very discoveries of science in such 
fields as public health and manufacturing processes have made 
it necessary to depend upon the expert, and if the ranks of 
experts are to be recruited broadly from the democratic masses 
as well as from those of larger means, the State Universities 
must furnish at least as liberal opportunities for research and 
training as the universities based on private endowments fur- 
nish. It needs no argument to show that it is not to the 



PIONEER IDEALS 285 

advantage of democracy to give over the training of the expert 
exclusively to privately endowed institutions. 

But quite as much in the field of legislation and of pub- 
lic life in general as in the industrial world is the expert 
needed. The industrial conditions which shape society are 
too complex, problems of labor, finance, social reform too diffi- 
cult to be dealt with intelligently and wisely without the 
leadership of highly educated men familiar with the legisla- 
tion and literature on social questions in other States and 
nations. 

By training in science, in law, politics, economics and his- 
tory the universities may supply from the ranks of democracy 
administrators, legislators, judges and experts for commis- 
sions who shall disinterestedly and intelligently mediate 
between contending interests. When the words " capitalistic 
classes '' and " the proletariate " can be used and understood 
in America it is surely time to develop such men, with the 
ideal of service to the State, v/ho may help to break the force 
of these collisions, to find common grounds between the con- 
testants and to possess the respect and confidence of all par- 
ties which are genuinely loyal to the best American ideals. 

The signs of such a development are already plain in the ex- 
pert commissions of some States; in the increasing proportion 
of university men in legislatures; in the university men's influ- 
ence in federal departments and commissions. It is hardly too 
much to say that the best hope of intelligent and principled 
progress in economic and social legislation and administration 
lies in the increasing influence of American universities. By 
sending out these open-minded experts, by furnishing well- 
fitted legislators, public leaders and teachers, by graduating 
successive armies of enlightened citizens accustomed to deal 
dispassionately with the problems of modern life, able to 



286 THE FRONTIER LN AMERICAN HISTORY 

think for themselves, governed not by ignorance, by prejudice 
or by impulse, but by knowledge and reason and high-minded - 
ness, the State Universities will safeguard democracy. With- 
out such leaders and followers democratic reactions may create 
revolutions, but they will not be able to produce industrial 
and social progress. America's problem is not violently to 
introduce democratic ideals, but to preserve and entrench 
them by courageous adaptation to new conditions. Educated 
leadership sets bulwarks against both the passionate impulses 
of the mob and the sinister designs of those who would sub- 
ordinate public welfare to private greed. Lord Bacon's 
splendid utterance still rings true: "The learning of the few 
is despotism; the learning of the many is liberty. And intelli- 
gent and principled liberty is fame, wisdom and power." 

There is a danger to the universities in this very oppor- 
tunity. At first pioneer democracy had scant respect for tlie 
expert. He believed that " a fool can put on his coat better 
than a wise man can do it for him." There is much truth 
in the belief; and the educated leader, even he who has been 
trained under present university conditions, in direct contact 
with the world about him, will still have to contend with this 
inherited suspicion of the expert. But if he be well trained 
and worthy of his training, if he be endowed with creative 
imagination and personality, he will make good his leadership. 

A more serious danger will come when the universities are 
fully recognized as powerful factors in shaping the life of the 
State — not mere cloisters, remote from its life, but an influen- 
tial element in its life. Then it may easily happen that the 
.smoke of the battle-field of political and social controversy 
will obscure their pure air, that efl"orts will be made to stamp 
out the exceptional doctrine and the exceptional man. Those 
who investigate and teach within the university walls must 
respond to the injunction of the church, '' Sursum corda" — 



PIONEER IDEALS 287 

lift up the heart to high thinking and impartial search for the 
unsullied truth in the interests of all the people; this is the 
holy grail of the universities. 

That they may perform their work they must be left free, as 
the pioneer was free, to explore new regions and to report 
what they find; for like the pioneers they have the ideal of 
investigation, they seek new horizons. They are not tied to 
past knowledge; they recognize the fact that the universe still 
abounds in mystery, that science and society have not crys- 
tallized, but are still growing and need their pioneer trail- 
makers. New and beneficent discoveries in nature, new and 
beneficial discoveries in the processes and directions of the 
growth of society, substitutes for the vanishing material basis 
of pioneer democracy may be expected if the university pio- 
neers are left free to seek the trail. 

In conclusion, the university has a duty in adjusting pioneer 
ideals to the new requirements of American democracy, even 
more important than those which I have named. The early 
pioneer was an individualist and a seeker after the undiscov- 
ered; but he did not understand the richness and complexity 
of life as a whole; he did not fully realize his opportunities 
of individualism and discovery. He stood in his somber for- 
est as the traveler sometimes stands in a village on the Alps 
when the mist has shrouded everything, and only the squalid 
hut, the stony field, the muddy pathway are in view. But 
suddenly a wind sweeps the fog away. Vast fields of radiant 
snow and sparkling ice lie before him; profound abysses open 
at his feet; and as he lifts his eyes the unimaginable peak of 
the Matlerhorn cleaves the thin air, far, far above. A new 
and unsuspected world is revealed all about him. Thus it is 
the function of the university to reveal to the individual the 
mystery and the glory of life as a whole — to open all the 
realms of rational human enjoym.ent and achievement; to 



388 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

preserve the consciousness of the past; to spread before the 
eye the beauty of the universe; and to throw wide its portals 
of duty and of power to the human soul. It must honor the 
poet and painter, the writer and the teacher, the scientist and 
llie inventor, the musician and the prophet of righteousness — 
the men of genius in all fields who make life nobler. It must 
call forth anew, and for finer uses, the pioneer's love of crea- 
tive individualism and provide for it a spiritual atmosphere 
friendly to the development of personality in all uplifting 
ways. It must check the tendency to act in mediocre social 
masses with undue emphasis upon the ideals of prosperity 
and politics. In short, it must summon ability of all kinds 
to joyous and earnest effort for the welfare and the spiritual 
enrichment of society. It must awaken new tastes and ambi- 
tions among the people. 

The light of these university watch towers should flash from 
State to State until American democracy itself is illuminated 
with higher and broader ideals of what constitutes service to 
the State and to mankind; of what are prizes; of what is wor- 
thy of praise and reward. So long as success in amassing 
great wealth for the aggrandizement of the individual is the 
exclusive or the dominant standard of success, so long as mate- 
rial prosperity, regardless of the conditions of its cost, or the 
civilization which results, is the shibboleth, American democ- 
racy, that faith in the common man which the pioneer cher- 
ishes, is in danger. For the strongest will make their way 
unerringly to whatever goal society sets up as the mark of 
conceded preeminence. What more effective agency is there 
for the cultivation of the seed wheat of ideals than the univer- 
sity? Where can we find a more promising body of sowers 
of the grain? 

The pioneer's clearing must be broadened into a domain 
where all that is worthy of human endeavor may find fertile 



PIONEER IDEALS 289 

soil on which to grow; and America must exact of the con- 
structive business geniuses who owe their rise to the freedom 
of pioneer democracy supreme allegiance and devotion to 
the commonweal. In fostering such an outcome and in tem- 
pering the asperities of the conflicts that must precede its ful- 
filment, the nation has no more promising agency than the 
State Universities, no more hopeful product than their grad- 
uates. 



XI 

The West and American Ideals ^ 

True to American traditions that each succeeding generation 
ought to find in the Republic a better home, once in every year 
the colleges and universities summon the nation to lift its 
eyes from the routine of work, in order to take stock of the 
country's purposes and achievements, to examine its past and 
consider its future. 

This attitude of self-examination is hardly characteristic of 
the people as a whole. Particularly it is not characteristic of 
the historic American. He has been an opportunist rather 
than a dealer in general ideas. Destiny set him in a current 
which bore him swiftly along through such a wealth of oppor- 
tunity that reflection and well-considered planning seemed 
wasted time. He knew not where he was going, but he was on 
his way, cheerful, optimistic, busy and buoyant. 

To-day we are reaching a changed condition, less apparent 
perhaps, in the newer regions than in the old, but sufficiently 
obvious to extend the commencement frame of mind from the 
college to the country as a whole. The swift and inevitable 
current of the upper reaches of the nation's history has borne 
it to the broader expanse and slower stretches which mark the 
nearness of the level sea. The vessel, no longer carried along 
by the rushing waters, finds it necessary to determine its own 

1 Commencement Address, University of Washington, June 17, 1914. 
Reprinted by permission from The Washington Historical Quarterly, 
October, 1914. 

290 



THE WEST AND AMERICAN IDEALS 291 

directions on this new ocean of its future, to give conscious 
consideration to its motive power and to its steering gear. 

It matters not so much that those who address these college 
men and women upon life, give conflicting answers to the 
questions of whence and whither: the pause for remembrance, 
for reflection and for aspiration is wholesome in itself. 

Although the American people are becoming more self- 
conscious, more responsive to the appeal to act by deliberate 
choices, we should be over-sanguine if we believed that even 
in this new day these commencement surveys were taken to 
heart by the general public, or that they were directly and 
immediately influential upon national thought and action. 

But even while we check our enthusiasm by this realization 
of the common thought, we must take heart. The University's 
peculiar privilege and distinction lie in the fact that it is not 
the passive instrument of the State to voice its current ideas. 
Its problem is not that of expressing tendencies. Its mission 
is to create tendencies and to direct them. Its problem is thai 
of leadership and of ideals. It is called, of course, to justify 
the support which the public gives it, by working in close and 
sympathetic touch with those it serves. More than that, it 
would lose important element of strength if it failed to recog- 
nize the fact that improvement and creative movement often 
come from the masses themselves, instinctively moving toward 
a better order. The University's graduates must be fitted to 
take their places naturally and effectually in the common life 
of the time. 

But the University is called especially to justify its exist- 
ence by giving to its sons and daughters something which 
they could not well have gotten through the ordinary expe- 
riences of the life outside its walls. It is called to serve the 
time by independent research and by original thought. If it 
were a mere recording instrument of conventional opinion and 



292 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

average information, it is hard to see why the University 
should exist at all. To clasp hands with the common life in 
order that it may lift that life, to be a radiant center enkin- 
dling the society in which it has its being, these are primary 
duties of the University. Fortunate the State which gives free 
play to this spirit of inquiry. Let it " grubstake " its intellec- 
tual prospectors and send them forth where " the trails run 
out and stop." A famous scientist holds that the universal 
ether bears vital germs which impinging upon a dead world 
would bring life to it. So, at least it is, in the world of 
thought, where energized ideals put in the air and carried here 
and there by the waves and currents of the intellectual atmos- 
phere, fertilize vast inert areas. 

The University, therefore, has a double duty. On the one 
hand it must aid in the improvement of the general economic 
and social environment. It must help on in the work of scien- 
tific discovery and of making such conditions of existence, 
economic, political and social, as will produce more fertile 
and responsive soil for a higher and better life. It must stim- 
ulate a wider demand on the part of the public for right 
leadership. It must extend its operations more widely among 
the people and sink deeper shafts through social strata to find 
new supplies of intellectual gold in popular levels yet 
untouched. And on the other hand, it must find and fit men 
and women for leadership. It must both awaken new demands 
and it must satisfy those demands by trained leaders with 
new motives, with new incentives to ambition, with higher and 
broader conception of what constitute the prize in life, of 
what constitutes success. The University has to deal with 
both the soil and sifted seed in the agriculture of the human 
spirit. 

Its efficiency is not the efficiency which the business engineer 
is fitted to appraise. If it is a training ship, it is a training 



THE WEST AND AMERICAN IDEALS 293 

ship bound on a voyage of discovery, seeking new horizons. 
The economy of the University's consumption can only be 
rightly measured by the later times which shall possess those 
new realms of the spirit which its voyage shall reveal. If the 
ships of Columbus had engaged in a profitable coastwise traflfic 
between Palos and Cadiz they might have saved sail cloth, but 
their keels would never have grated on the shores of a New 
World. 

The appeal of the undiscovered is strong in America. For 
three centuries the fundamental process in its history was 
the westward movement, the discovery and occupation of the 
vast free spaces of the continent. We are the first genera- 
tion of Americans who can look back upon that era as a his- 
toric movement now coming to its end. Other generations 
have been so much a part of it that they could hardly com- 
prehend its significance. To them it seemed inevitable. The 
free land and the natural resources seemed practically inex- 
haustible. Nor were they aware of the fact that their most 
fundamental traits, their institutions, even their ideals were 
shaped by this interaction between the wilderness and them- 
selves. 

American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was 
not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the May- 
flower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and 
it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier. 
Not the constitution, but free land and an abundance of natural 
resources open to a fit people, made the democratic type of 
fociety in America for three centuries while it occupied its 
empire. 

To-day we are looking with a shock upon a changed world. 
The national problem is no longer how to cut and burn away 
the vast screen of the dense and daunting forest; it is how 
to save and wisely use the remaining timber. It is no longer 



294 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

how to get the great spaces of fertile prairie land in humid 
zones out of the hands of the government into the hands of 
the pioneer; these lands have already passed into private 
possession. No longer is it a question of how to avoid or 
cross the Great Plains and the arid desert. It is a question 
of how to conquer those rejected lands by new method of 
farming and by cultivating new crops from seed collected 
by the government and by scientists from the cold, dry steppes 
of Siberia, the burning sands of Egypt, and the remote in- 
terior of China. It is a problem of how to bring the pre- 
cious rills of water on to the alkali and sage brush. Popula- 
tion is increasing faster than the food supply. 

New farm lands no longer increase decade after decade 
in areas equal to those of European states. While the ratio 
of increase of improved land declines, the value of farm lands 
rise and the price of food leaps upward, reversing the old 
ratio between the two. The cry of scientific farming and 
the conservation of natural resources replaces the cry of rapid 
conquest of the wilderness. We have so far won our national 
home, wrested from it its first rich treasures, and drawn to 
it the unfortunate of other lands, that we are already obliged 
to compare ourselves with settled states of the Old World. 
In place of our attitude of contemptuous indifference to the 
legislation of such countries as Germany and England, even 
Western States like Wisconsin send commissions to study their 
systems of taxation, workingmen's insurance, old age pensions 
and a great variety of other remedies for social ills. 

If we look about the periphery of the nation, everywhere we 
see the indications that our world is changing. On the streets 
of Northeastern cities like New York and Boston, the faces 
which we meet are to a surprising extent those of Southeast- 
ern Europe. Puritan New England, which turned its capital 
into factories and mills and drew to its shores an army of 



THE WEST AND AMERICAN IDEALS 295 

cheap labor, governed these people for a time by a ruling 
class like an upper stratum between which and the lower 
strata there was no assimilation. There was no such evolu- 
tion into an assimilated commonwealth as is seen in Middle 
Western agricultural States, where immigrant and old native 
stock came in together and built up a homogeneous society on 
the principle of give and take. But now the Northeastern 
coast finds its destiny, politically and economically, passing 
away from the descendants of the Puritans. It is the little 
Jewish boy, the Greek or the Sicilian, who takes the traveler 
through historic streets, now the home of these newer people 
to the Old North Church or to Paul Revere's house, or to Tea 
Wharf, and tells you in his strange patois the story of revolu- 
tion again^jt oppression. 

Along the Southern Atlantic and the Gulf coast, in spite of 
the preservative influence of the negro, whose presence has 
always called out resistance to change on the part of the 
whites, the forces of social and industrial transformation are 
at work. The old tidewater aristocracy has surrendered to 
the up-country democrats. Along the line of the Alleghanies 
like an advancing column, the forces of Northern capital, 
textile and steel mills, year after year extend their invasion 
into the lower South. New Orleans, once the mistress of the 
commerce of the Mississippi Valley, is awakening to new 
dreams of world commerce. On the southern border, similar 
invasions of American capital have been entering Mexico. At 
the same time, the opening of the Panama Canal has com- 
pleted the dream of the ages of the Straits of Anian between 
Atlantic and Pacific. Four hundred years ago, Balboa raised 
the flag of Spain at the edge of the Sea of the West and we 
are now preparing to celebrate both that anniversary, and 
the piercing of the continent. New relations have been created 
between Spanish America and the United States and the world 



296 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

is watching the mediation of Argentina, Brazil and Chile 
between the contending forces of Mexico and the Union. Once 
more alien national interests lie threatening at our borders, 
but we no longer appeal to the Monroe Doctrine and send our 
armies of frontiersmen to settle our concerns off-hand. We 
take council with European nations and with the sisterhood of 
South America, and propose a remedy of social reorganization 
in place of imperious will and force. Whether the effort will 
succeed or not, it is a significant indication that an old order 
is passing away, when such a solution is undertaken by a 
President of Scotch Presbyterian stock, born in the State of 
Virginia. 

If we turn to the Northern border, where we are about to 
celebrate a century of peace with England, we see in progress, 
like a belated procession of our own history the spread of 
pioneers, the opening of new wildernesses, the building of new 
cities, the growth of a new and mighty nation. That old 
American advance of the wheat farmer from the Connecticut 
to the Mohawk, and the Genesee, from the Great Valley of 
Pennsylvania to the Ohio Valley and the prairies of the Middle 
West, is now by its own momentum and under the stimulus 
of Canadian homesteads and the high price of wheat, carried 
across the national border to the once lone plains where 
the Hudson Bay dog trains crossed the desolate snows of 
the wild North Land. In the Pacific Northwest the era of 
construction has not ended, but it is so rapidly in progress 
that we can already see the closing of the age of the pioneer. 
Already Alaska beckons on the north, and pointing to her 
wealth of natural resources asks the nation on what new 
terms the new age will deal with her. Across the Pacific 
looms Asia, no longer a remote vision and a symbol of the 
unchanging, but borne as by mirage close to our shores and 
raising grave questions of the common destiny of the people 



THE WEST AND AMERICAN IDEALS 297 

of the ocean. The dreams of Benton and of Seward of a 
regenerated Orient, when the long march of westward civili- 
zation should complete its circle, seem almost to be in process 
of realization. The age of the Pacific Ocean begins, myste- 
rious and unfathomable in its meaning for our own future. 

Turning to view the interior, we see the same picture of 
change. When the Superintendent of the Census in 1890 
declared the frontier line no longer traceable, the beginning 
of the rush into Oklahoma had just occurred. Here where 
the broken fragments of Indian nations from the East had 
been gathered and where the wilder tribes of the Southwest 
were being settled, came the rush of the land-hungry pioneer. 
Almost at a blow the old Indian territory passed away, popu- 
lous cities came into being and it was not long before gushing 
oil wells made a new era of sudden wealth. The farm lands 
of the Middle West taken as free homesteads or bought for a 
mere pittance, have risen so in value that the original owners 
have in an increasing degree either sold them in order to 
reinvest in the newer cheap lands of the West, or have moved 
into the town and have left the tillage to tenant farmers. Tlie 
growth of absentee ownership of the soil is producing a serious 
problem in the former centers of the Granger and the Popu- 
list. Along the Old Northwest the Great Lakes are becoming 
a new Mediterranean Sea joining the realms of wheat and 
iron ore, at one end with the coal and furnaces of the forks 
of the Ohio, where the most intense and wide-reaching center 
of industrial energy exists. City life like that of the East, 
manufactures and accumulated capital, seem to be reproduc- 
ing in the center of the Republic the tendencies already so 
plain on the Atlantic Coast. 

Across the Great Plains where buffalo and Indian held sway 
successive industrial waves are passing. The old free range 
gave place to the ranch, the ranch to the homestead and now 



298 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

in places in the arid lands the homestead is replaced by the 
ten or twenty acre irrigated fruit farm. The age of cheap 
land, cheap corn and wheat, and cheap cattle has gone for- 
ever. The federal government has undertaken vast paternal 
enterprises of reclamation of the desert. 

In the Rocky Mountains where at the time of Civil War, 
the first important rushes to gold and silver mines carried the 
frontier backward on a march toward the east, the most amaz- 
ing transformations have occurred. Here, where prospectors 
made new trails, and lived the wild free life of mountain 
men, here where the human spirit seemed likely to attain the 
largest measure of individual freedom, and where fortune 
beckoned to the common man, have come revolutions wrought 
by the demand for organized industry and capital. In the 
regions where the popular tribunal and the free competitive 
life flourished, we have seen law and order break down in the 
unmitigated collision of great aggregations of capital, with 
each other and with organized socialistic labor. The Cripple 
Creek strikes, the contests at Butte, the Goldfield mobs, the 
recent Colorado fighting, all tell a similar story, — the solid 
impact of contending forces in regions where civic power and 
loyalty to the State have never fully developed. Like tlie 
Grand Caiion, where in dazzling light the huge geologic his- 
tory is written so large that none may fail to read it, so in 
the Rocky Mountains the dangers of modern American indus- 
trial tendencies have been exposed. 

As we crossed the Cascades on our way to Seattle, one of 
the passengers was moved to explain his feeling on the excel- 
lence of Puget Sound in contrast with the remaining visible 
Universe. He did it well in spite of irreverent interruptions 
from those fellow travelers who were unconverted children 
of the East, and at last he broke forth in passionate challenge, 
"Why should I not love Seattle! It took me from the slums 



THE WEST AND AMERICAN IDEALS 299 

of the Atlantic Coast, a poor Swedish boy wilh hardly fifteen 
dollars in my pocket. It gave me a home by the beautiful 
sea; it spread before my eyes a vision of snow-capped peaks 
and smiling fields; it brought abundance and a new life to me 
and my children and I love it, I love it! If I were a multi- 
millionaire I would charter freight cars and carry away from 
the crowded tenements and noisome alleys of the eastern cities 
and the Old World the toiling m.asses, and let them loose in 
our vast forests and ore-laden m.ountains to learn what life 
really is! " And my heart was stirred by his words and by 
the whirling spaces of woods and peaks through which we 
passed. 

But as I looked and listened to this passionate outcry, I 
remembered the words of Talleyrand, the exiled Bishop of 
Autun, in Washington's administration. Looking down from 
an eminence not far from Philadelphia upon a wilderness 
which is now in the heart of that huge industrial society 
where population presses on the means of life, even the cold- 
blooded and cynical Talleyrand, gazing on those unpeopled 
hills and forests, kindled with the vision of coming clearings, 
the smiiling farms and grazing herds that were to be, the 
populous towns that should be built, the newer and finer social 
organization that should there arise. And then I remembered 
the hall in Harvard's museum of social ethics through which 
I pass to my lecture room when I speak on the history of the 
Westward movement. That hall is covered with an exhibit 
of the work in Pittsburgh steel mills, and of the congested 
tenements. Its charts and diagrams tell of the long hours of 
work, the death rate, the relation of typhoid to the slums, the 
gathering of the poor of all Southeastern Europe to make a 
civilization at that center of American industrial energy and 
vast capital that is a social tragedy. As I enter my lecture 
room through that hall, I speak of the young Washington 



300 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

leading his Virginia frontiersmen to the magnificent forest at 
the forks of the Ohio. Where Braddock and his men, " carv- 
ing a cross on the wilderness rim," were struck by the painted 
savages in the primeval woods, huge furnaces belch forth 
perpetual fires and Huns and Bulgars, Poles and Sicilians 
struggle for a chance to earn their daily bread, and live a 
brutal and degraded life. Irresistibly there rushed across my 
mind the memorable words of Huxley: 

"Even the best of modern civilization appears 
to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which 
neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even pos- 
sesses the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to 
express the opinion that, if there is no hope of a 
large improvement of the condition of the greater 
part of the human family; if it is true that the 
increase of knowledge, the winning of a greater 
dominion over Nature, which is its consequence, 
and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, 
are to make no difference in the extent and the 
intensity of Want, with its concomitant physical 
and moral degradation, among the masses of the 
people, I should hail the advent of some kindly 
comet, which would sweep the whole affair away, 
as a desirable consummation." 

But if there is disillusion and shock and apprehension as 
we come to realize these changes, to strong men and women 
there is challenge and inspiration in them too. In place of 
old frontiers of wilderness, there are new frontiers of unwon 
fields of science, fruitful for the needs of the race; there are 
frontiers of better social domains yet unexplored. Let us 
hold to our attitude of faith and courage, and creative zeal, ' 



THE WEST AND AMERICAN IDEALS 301 

Let us dream as our fathers dreamt and let us make our dreams 
come true. 

"Daughters of Time, the hypocritic days, 
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes. 

And marching single in an endless file, 

Bear diadems and fagots in their hands. 
To each they offer gifts after his will 
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that hold them all. 
I, in my pleached garden watched the pomp. 
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily 
Took a few herbs and apples and the day 
Turned and departed silent. I, too late. 
Under her solemn fillet, saw the scorn ! " 

What were America's " morning wishes "? From the begin- 
ning of that long westward march of the American people 
America has never been the home of mere contented material- 
ism. It has continuously sought new ways and dreamed of a 
perfected social type. 

In the fifteenth century when men dealt with the New World 
which Columbus found, the ideal of discovery was dominant. 
Here was placed within the reach of men whose ideas had 
been bounded by the Atlantic, new realms to be explored. 
America became the land of European dreams, its Fortunate 
Islands were made real, where, in the imagination of old 
Europe, peace and happiness, as well as riches and eternal 
youth, were to be found. To Sir Edwin Sandys and his 
friends of the London Company, Virginia offered an oppor- 
tunity to erect the Republic for which they had longed in vain 
in England. To the Puritans, New England was the new land 
of freedom, wherein they might establish the institutions of 
God, according to their own faith. As the vision died away 
in Virginia toward the close of the seventeenth century, it 
was taken up anew by the fiery Bacon with his revolution 
to establish a real democracy in place of the rule of the 



planter aristocracy, that formed along the coast. Hardly had 
he been overthrown when in the eighteenth century, the demo- 
cratic ideal was rejuvenated by the strong frontiersmen, who 
pressed beyond the New England Coast into the Berkshires 
and up the valleys of the Green Mountains of Vermont, and 
by the Scotch-Irish and German pioneers who followed the 
Great Valley from Pennsylvania into the Upland South. In 
both the Yankee frontiersmen and the Scotch-Irish Presby- 
terians of the South, the Calvinistic conception of the impor- 
tance of the individual, bound by free covenant to his fellow 
men and to God, was a compelling influence, and all their 
wilderness experience combined to emphasize the ideals of 
opening new ways, of giving freer play to the individual, and 
of constructing democratic society. 

When the backwoodsmen crossed the AUeghanies they put 
between themselves and the Atlantic Coast a barrier which 
seemed to separate them from a region already too much like 
the Europe they had left, and as they followed the courses of 
the rivers that flowed to the Mississippi, they called them- 
selves " Men of the Western Waters," and their new home in 
the Mississippi Valley was the "Western World." Here, by 
the thirties, Jacksonian democracy flourished, strong in the 
faith of the intrinsic excellence of the common man, in his 
right to make his own place in the world, and in his capacity 
to share in government. But while Jacksonian democracy 
demanded these rights, it was also loyal to leadership as the 
very name implies. It was ready to follow to the uttermost 
the man in whom it placed its trust, whether the hero were 
frontier fighter or president, and it even rebuked and limited 
its own legislative representatives and recalled its senators 
when they ran counter to their chosen executive. Jacksonian 
democracy was essentially rural. It was based on the good 
fellowship and genuine social feeling of the frontier, in which 



THE WEST AND AMERICAN IDEALS 303 

classes and inequalities of fortune played Utile part. But it 
did not demand equality of condition, for there was abundance 
of natural resources and the belief that the self-made man 
had a right to his success in the free competition which 
western life afforded, was as prominent in their thought as was 
the love of democracy. On the other hand, they viewed gov- 
ernmental restraints with suspicion as a limitation on their 
right to work out their own individuality. 

For the banking institutions and capitalists of the East they 
had an instinctive antipathy. Already they feared that the 
" money power " as Jackson called it, was planning to make 
hewers of wood and drawers of water of the common people. 

In this view they found allies among the labor leaders of 
the East, who in the same period began their fight for better 
conditions of the wage earner. These Locofocos were the 
first Americans to demand fundamental social changes for 
the benefit of the workers in the cities. Like the Western 
pioneers, they protested against monopolies and special priv- 
ilege. But they also had a constructive policy, whereby society 
was to be kept democratic by free gifts of the public land, so 
that surplus labor might not bid against itself, but might find 
an outlet in the West. Thus to both the labor theorist and 
the practical pioneer, the existence of what seemed inexhaust- 
ible cheap land and unpossessed resources was the condition 
of democracy. In these years of the thirties and forties. West- 
ern democracy took on its distinctive form. Travelers like 
De Tocqueville and Harriet Martineau, cam.e to study and to 
report it enthusiastically to Europe. 

Side by side with this westward marching army of individ- 
ualistic liberty-loving democratic backwoodsmen, went a more 
northern stream of pioneers, who cherished similar ideas, but 
added to them the desire to create new industrial centers, to 
build up factories, to build railroads, and to develop tlie 



304 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

country by founding cities and extending prosperity. They 
were ready to call upon legislatures to aid in this, by sub- 
scriptions to stock, grants of franchises, promotion of bank- 
ing and internal improvements. These were the Whig follow- 
ers of that other Western leader, Henry Clay, and their early 
strength lay in the Ohio Valley, and particularly among the 
well-to-do. In the South their strength was found among the 
aristocracy of the Cotton Kingdom. 

Both of these Western groups, Whigs and Democrats alike, 
had one common ideal: the desire to leave their children a 
better heritage than they themselves had received, and both 
were fired with devotion to the ideal of creating in this New 
World a home more worthy of mankind. Both were ready to 
break with the past, to boldly strike out new lines of social 
endeavor, and both believed in American expansion. 

Before these tendencies had worked themselves out, three 
new forces entered. In the sudden extension of our boundaries 
to the Pacific Coast, which took place in the forties, the nation 
won so vast a domain that its resources seemed illimitable 
and its society seemed able to throw off all its maladies by the 
very presence of these vast new spaces. At the same period 
the great activity of railroad building to the Mississippi Val- 
ley occurred, making these lands available and diverting atten- 
tion to the task of economic construction. The third influence 
was the slavery question which, becoming acute, shaped the 
American ideals and public discussion for nearly a genera- 
tion. Viewed from one angle, this struggle involved the great 
question of national unity. From another it involved the ques- 
tion of the relations of labor and capital, democracy and 
aristocracy. It was not without significance that Abraham 
Lincoln became the very type of American pioneer democracy, 
the first adequate and elemental demonstration to the world 



THE WEST AND AMERICAN IDEALS 305 

that that democracy could produce a man who belonged to 
the ages. ^ 

After the war, new national energies were set loose, and new 
construction and development engaged the attention of the 
Westerners as they occupied prairies and Great Plains and 
mountains. Democracy and capitalistic development did not 
seem antagonistic. 

With the passing of the frontier. Western social and political 
ideals took new form. Capital began to consolidate in even 
greater masses, and increasingly attempted to reduce to sys- 
tem and control the processes of industrial development. La- 
bor with equal step organized its forces to destroy the old com- 
petitive system. It is not strange that the Western pioneers 
took alarm for their ideals of democracy as the outcome of 
the free struggle for the national resources became apparent. 
They espoused the cause of governmental activity. 

It was a new gospel, for the Western radical became con- 
vinced that he must sacrifice his ideal of individualism and 
free competition in order to maintain his ideal of democracy. 
Under this conviction the Populist revised the pioneer con- 
ception of government. He saw in government no longer 
something outside of him, but the people themselves shaping 
their own afifairs. He demanded therefore an extension of 
the powers of governments in the interest of his historic ideal 
of democratic society. He demanded not only free silver, but 
the ownership of the agencies of communication and trans- 
portation, the income tax, the postal savings bank, the pro- 
vision of means of credit for agriculture, the construction of 
more effective devices to express the will of the people, primary 
nominations, direct elections, initiative, referendum and recall. 
In a word, capital, labor, and the Western pioneer, all deserted 
the ideal of competitive individualism in order to organiao 



306 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY ^ 

their interests in more effective combinations. The disappear- 
ance of the frontier, the closing of the era which was marked 
by the influence of the West as a form of society, brings with 
it new problems of social adjustment, new demands for con- [\ 
sidering our past ideals and our present needs. 

Let us recall the conditions of the foreign relations along 
our borders, the dangers that wait us if we fail to unite in 
the solution of our domestic problems. Let us recall those 
internal evidences of the destruction of our old social order. 
If we take to heart this warning, we shall do well also to 
recount our historic ideals, to take stock of those purposes, ; 
and fundamental assumptions that have gone to make the 
American spirit and the meaning of America in world his- 
tory. 

First of all, there was the ideal of discovery, the cour- 
ageous determination to break new paths, indifference to the 
dogma that because an institution or a condition exists, it must 
remain. All American experience has gone to the making of 
the spirit of innovation; it is in the blood and will not be 
repressed. 

Then, there was the ideal of democracy, the ideal of a free 
self-directing people, responsive to leadership in the forming 
of programs and their execution, but insistent that the pro- 
cedure should be that of free choice, not of compulsion. 
, But there was also the ideal of individualism. This demo- 
cratic society was not a disciplined army, where all must keep 
step and where the collective interests destroyed individual 
will and work. Rather it was a mobile mass of freely circu- 
lating atoms, each seeking its own place and finding play for 
its own powers and for its own original initiative. We cannot 
lay too much stress upon this point, for it was at the very heart 
of the whole American movement. The world was to be made 
a better world by the example of a democracy in which there 



THE WEST AND AiMERICAN IDEALS 307 

was freedom of the individual, in which there was the vitality 
and nriobility productive of originality and variety. 

Bearing in mind the far-reaching influence of the disappear- 
ance of unlimited resources open to all men for the taking, 
and considering the recoil of the common man when he saw 
the outcome of the competitive struggle for these resources as 
the supply came to its end over most of the nation, we can 
understand the reaction against individualism and in favor 
of drastic assertion of the powers of government. Legisla- 
tion is taking the place of the free lands as the means of pre- 
serving the ideal of democracy. But at the same time it is 
endangering the other pioneer ideal of creative and competi- 
tive individualism. Both were essential and constituted what 
was best in America's contribution to history and to progress. 
Both must be preserved if the nation would be true to its past, 
and would fulfil its highest destiny. It would be a grave mis- 
fortune if these people so rich in experience, in self-confidence 
and aspiration, in creative genius, should turn to some Old 
World discipline of socialism or plutocracy, or despotic rule, 
whether by class or by dictator. Nor shall we be driven to 
these alternatives. Our ancient hopes, our courageous faith, 
our underlying good humor and love of fair play will triumph 
in the end. There will be give and take in all directions. 
There will be disinterested leadership, under loyalty to the 
best American ideals. Nowhere is this leadership more likely 
to arise than among the men trained in the Universities, aware 
of the promise of the past and the possibilities of the future. 
The times call for new ambitions and new motives. 

In a most suggestive essay on the Problems of Modern 
Democracy, Mr. Godkin has said: 

M. de Tocqueville and all his followers take it 
for granted that the great incentive to excellence, 



308 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

in all countries in which excellence is found, is 
the patronage and encouragement of an aristoc- 
racy; that democracy is generally content with 
mediocrity. But where is the proof of this? The 
incentive to exertion which is widest, most con- 
stant, and most powerful in its operations in all 
civilized countries, is the desire of distinction; 
and this may be composed either of love of fame or 
love of wealth or of both. In literary and artistic 
and scientific pursuits, sometimes the strongest 
influence is exerted by a love of the subject. But 
it may safely be said that no man has ever labored 
in any of the higher colleges to whom the applause 
and appreciation of his fellows was not one of the 
sweetest rewards of his exertions. 

What is there we would ask, in the nature of 
democratic institutions, that should render this 
great spring of action powerless, that should 
deprive glory of all radiance, and put ambition to 
sleep? Is it not notorious, on the contrary, that 
one of the most marked peculiarities of democratic 
society, or of a society drifting toward democracy, 
is the fire of competition which rages in it, the fe- 
vered anxiety which possesses all its members to 
rise above the dead level to which the law is ever 
seeking to confine them, and by some brilliant 
stroke become something higher and more remark- 
able than their fellows? The secret of that great 
restlessness which is one of the most disagreeable 
accompaniments of life in democratic countries, 
is in fact due to the eagerness of everybody to 
grasp the prizes of which in aristocratic countries, 
only the few have much chance. And in no other 



THE WEST AND AMERICAN IDEALS 309 

society is success more worshiped, is distinction 
of any kind more widely flattered and caressed. 

In democratic societies, in fact, excellence is the 
first title to distinction; in aristocratic ones there 
are two or three others which are far stronger and 
which must be stronger or aristocracy could not 
exist. The moment you acknowledge that the high- 
est social position ought to be the reward of the 
man who has the most talent, you make aristocratic 
institutions impossible. 

All that was buoyant and creative in American life would 
be lost if we gave up the respect for distinct personality, and 
variety in genius, and came to the dead level of com.mon 
standards. To be " socialized into an average " and placed 
" under the tutelage of the mass of us," as a recent writer 
has put it, would be an irreparable loss. Nor is it necessary 
in a democracy, as these words of Godkin well disclose. What 
is needed is the multiplication of motives for ambition and 
the opening of new lines of achievement for the strongest. 
As we turn from the task of the first rough conquest of the 
continent there lies before us a whole wealth of unexploited 
resources in the realm of the spirit. Arts and letters, science 
and better social creation, loyalty and political service to tho 
commonweal, — these and a thousand other directions of activ- 
ity are open to the men, who formerly under the incentive of 
attaining distinction by amassing extraordinary wealth, saw 
success only in material display. Newer and finer careers 
will open to the ambitious when once public opinion shall 
award the laurels to those who rise above their fellows in 
these new fields of labor. It has not been the gold, but the 
getting of the gold, that has caught the imaginations of our 
captains of industry. Their real enjoyment lay not in th? 



310 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

luxuries which wealth brought, but in the work of construction 
and in the place which society awarded them. A new era 
will come if schools and universities can only widen the 
intellectual horizon of the people, help to lay the foundations 
of a better industrial life, show them new goals for endeavor, 
inspire them with more varied and higher ideals. 

The Western spirit must be invoked for new and nobler 
achievements. Of that matured Western spirit, Tennyson's 
Ulysses is a symbol. 

"... I am become a name 

For always roaming with an hungry heart. 

Much have I seen and known . . . 

I am a part of all that I have met; 

Yet all experience is an arch, where thro' 

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades 

Forever and forever when I move. 

How dull it is to pause, to make an end. 

To rust unbumished, not to shine in use! 

And this gray spirit yearning in desire 
To follow knowledge like a shining star 
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. 
. . . Come my friends, 
Tis not too late to seek a newer world. 
Push off, and sitting well in order smite 
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds 
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
Of all the Western stars until I die 



To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield. 



XII 

Social Forces in American History ^ 

The transformations through which the United States is 
passing in our own day are so profound, so far-reaching, that 
it is hardly an exaggeration to say that we are witnessing the 
birth of a new nation in America. The revolution in the 
social and economic structure of this country during the past 
two decades is comparable to what occurred when independ- 
ence was declared and the constitution was formed, or to the 
changes wrought by the era which began half a century ago, 
the era of Civil War and Reconstruction. 

These changes have been long in preparation and are, in 
part, the result of world-wide forces of reorganization inci- 
dent to the age of steam production and large-scale industry, 
and, in part, the result of the closing of the period of the 
colonization of the West. They have been prophesied, and 
the course of the movement partly described by students of 
American development; but after all, it is with a shock that 
the people of the United States are coming to realize that the 
fundamental forces which have shaped their society up to the 
present are disappearing. Twenty years ago, as I have before 
had occasion to point out, the Superintendent of the Census 
declared that the frontier line, which its maps had depicted 
for decade after decade of the westward march of the nation, 

1 Annual address as the president of the American Historical Associa- 
tion, delivered at Indianapolis, December 28, 1910. Reprinted by per- 
mission from The American Historical Review, January, 1911. 

311 



312 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

could no longer be described. To-day we must add that the 
age of free competition of individuals for the unpossessed 
resources of the nation is nearing its end. It is taking less 
than a generation to write the chapter which began with the 
disappearance of the line of the frontier — the last chapter in 
the history of the colonization of the United States, the con- 
clusion to the annals of its pioneer democracy. 

It is a wonderful chapter, this final rush of American energy 
upon the remaining wilderness. Even the bare statistics 
become eloquent of a new era. They no longer derive their 
significance from the exhibit of vast proportions of the public 
domain transferred to agriculture, of wildernesses equal to 
European nations changed decade after decade into the farm 
area of the United States. It is true there was added to the 
farms of the nation between 1870 and 1880 a territory equal 
to that of France, and between 1880 and 1900 a territory equal 
to the European area of France, Germany, England, and Wales 
combined. The records of 1910 are not yet available, but 
whatever they reveal they will not be so full of meaning as 
the figures which tell of upleaping wealth and organization and 
concentration of industrial power in the East in the last decade. 
As the final provinces of the Western empire have been sub- ' 
dued to the purposes of civilization and have yielded their 
spoils, as the spheres of operation of the great industrial cor- 
porations have extended, with the extension of American settle- 
ment, production and wealth have increased beyond all prece- 
dent. 

The total deposits in all national banks have more than 
trebled in the present decade; the money in circulation has 
doubled since 1890. The flood of gold makes it difficult to 
gage the full meaning of the incredible increase in values, 
for in the decade ending with 1909 over 41,600,000 ounces of 
gold were mined in the United States alone. Over four mil- 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 313 

lion ounces have been produced every year since 1905, whereas 
between 1880 and 1894 no year showed a production of two 
million ounces. As a result of this swelling stream of gold 
and instruments of credit, aided by a variety of other causes, 
prices have risen until their height has become one of the most 
marked features and influential factors in American life, pro- 
ducing social readjustments and contributing effectively to 
party revolutions. 

But if we avoid those statistics which require analysis 
because of the changing standard of value, we still find that 
the decade occupies an exceptional place in American history. 
More coal was mined in the United States in the ten years 
after 1897 than in all the life of the nation before that time." 
Fifty years ago we mined less than fifteen million long tons 
of coal. In 1907 we mined nearly 429,000,000. At the pres- 
ent rate it is estimated that the supply of coal would be 
exhausted at a date no farther in the future than the formation 
of the constitution is in the past. Iron and coal are the 
measures of industrial power. The nation has produced three 
times as much iron ore in the past two decades as in all its 
previous history; the production of the past ten years was 
more than double that of the prior decade. Pig-iron pro- 
duction is admitted to be an excellent barometer of manufac- 
ture and of transportation. Never until 1893 had this reached 
an annual total of ten million long tons. But in the five years 
beginning with 1904 it averaged over twice that. By 1907 
the United States had surpassed Great Britain, Germany, and 
France combined in the production of pig-iron and steel 
together, and in the same decade a single great corporation 
has established its domination over the iron mines and steel 
manufacture of the United States. It is more than a mere 
accident that the United States Steel Corporation with its 
2 Van Hise, " Conservation of Natural Resources," pp. 23, 24. 



.314 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

stocks and bonds aggregating $1,400,000,000 was organized 
at the beginning of the present decade. The former wilder- 
ness about Lake Superior has, principally in the past two dec- 
ades, established its position as overwhelmingly the preponder- 
ant source of iron ore, present and prospective, in the United 
States — a treasury from which Pittsburgh has drawn wealth 
and extended its unparalleled industrial empire in these years. 
The tremendous energies thus liberated at this center of indus- 
trial power in the United States revolutionized methods of 
manufacture in general, and in many indirect ways profoundly 
influenced the life of the nation. 

Railroad statistics also exhibit unprecedented development, 
the formation of a new industrial society. The number of 
passengers carried one mile more than doubled between 1890 
and 1908; freight carried one mile has nearly trebled in the 
same period and has doubled in the past decade. Agricultural 
products tell a different story. The corn crop has only risen 
from about two billion bushels in 1891 to two and seven-tenths 
billions in 1909; wheat from six hundred and eleven million 
bushels in 1891 to only seven hundred and thirty-seven million 
in 1909; and cotton from about nine million bales in 1891 to 
ten and three-tenths million bales in 1909. Population has 
increased in the United States proper from about sixty-two 
and one-half millions in 1890 to seventy-five and one-half 
millions in 1900 and to over ninety millions in 1910. 

It is clear from these statistics that the ratio of the nation's 
increased production of immediate wealth by the enormously 
increased exploitation of its remaining natural resources vastly 
exceeds the ratio of increase of population and still more strik- 
ingly exceeds the ratio of increase of agricultural products. 
Already population is pressing upon the food supply while 
capital consolidates in billion-dollar organizations. The 
" Triumphant Democracy " whose achievements the iron-master 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 315 

celebrated has reached a stature even more imposing than he 
could have foreseen; but still less did he perceive the changes 
in democracy itself and the conditions of its life which have 
accompanied this material growth. 

Having colonized the Far West, having mastered its internal 
resources, the nation turned at the conclusion of the nineteenth 
and the beginning of the twentieth century to deal with the 
Far East to engage in the world-politics of the Pacific Ocean. 
Having continued its historic expansion into the lands of the 
old Spanish empire by the successful outcome of the recent 
war, the United States became the mistress of the Philippines 
at the same time that it came into possession of the Hawaiian 
Islands, and the controlling influence in the Gulf of Mexico. 
It provided early in the present decade for connecting its 
Atlantic and Pacific coasts by the Isthmian Canal, and became 
an imperial republic with dependencies and protectorates — 
admittedly a new world-power, with a potential voice in the 
problems of Europe, Asia, and Africa. 

This extension of power, this undertaking of grave responsi- 
bilities in new fields, this entry into the sisterhood of world- 
states, was no isolated event. It was, indeed, in some respects 
the logical outcome of the nation's march to the Pacific, the 
sequence to the era in which it was engaged in occupying the 
free lands and exploiting the resources of the West. When 
it had achieved this position among the nations of the earth, 
the United States found itself confronted, also, with the need 
of constitutional readjustment, arising from the relations of 
federal government and territorial acquisitions. It was obliged 
to reconsider questions of the rights of man and traditional 
American ideals of liberty and democracy, in view of the 
task of government of other races politically inexperienced 
and undeveloped. 

If we turn to consider the effect upon American society an4 



316 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

domestic policy in these two decades of transition we are 
met with palpable evidences of the invasion of the old pioneer 
democratic order. Obvious among them is the effect of unprec- 
edented immigration to supply the mobile army of cheap 
labor for the centers of industrial life. In the past ten years, 
beginning with 1900, over eight million immigrants have 
arrived. The newcomers of the eight years since 1900 would, 
according to a writer in 1908, " repopulate all the five older 
New England States as they stand to-day; or, if properly dis- 
seminated over the newer parts of the country they would 
serve to populate no less than nineteen states of the Union as 
they stand." In 1907 "there were one and one-quarter mil- 
lion arrivals. This number would entirely populate both New 
Hampshire and Maine, two of our oldest States." " The 
arrivals of this one year would found a State with more inhab- 
itants than any one of twenty-one of our other existing com- 
monwealths which could be named." Not only has the addi- 
tion to the population from Europe been thus extraordinary, 
it has come in increasing measure from southern and eastern 
Europe. For the year 1907, Professor Ripley,^ whom I am 
quoting, has redistributed the incomers on the basis of physical 
type and finds that one-quarter of them were of the Mediter- 
ranean race, one-quarter of the Slavic race, one-eighth Jewish, 
and only one-sixth of the Alpine, and one-sixth of the Teu- 
tonic. In 1882 Germans had come to the amount of 250,000; 
in 1907 they were replaced by 330,000 South Italians. Thus 
it is evident that the ethnic elements of the United States have 
undergone startling changes; and instead of spreading over 
the nation these immigrants have concentrated especially in 
the cities and great industrial centers in the past decade. The 
composition of the labor class and its relation to wages and 
to the native American employer have been deeply influenced 
^Atlantic Monthly, December, 1908, vii, p. 745. 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 317 

thereby; the sympathy of the employers with labor has been 
unfavorably affected by the pressure of great numbers of immi- 
grants of alien nationality and of lower standards of life. 

The familiar facts of the massing of population in the cities 
and the contemporaneous increase of urban power, and of the 
massing of capital and production in fewer and vastly greater 
industrial units, especially attest the revolution. " It is a 
proposition too plain to require elucidation," wrote Richard 
Rush, Secretary of the Treasury, in his report of 1827, " that 
the creation of capital is retarded rather than accelerated by 
the diffusion of a thin population over a great surface of soil." * 
Thirty years before Rush wrote these words Albert Gallatin 
declared in Congress that " if the cause of the happiness of 
this country were examined into, it would be found to arise 
as much from the great plenty of land in proportion to the 
inhabitants which their citizens enjoyed as from the wisdom 
of their political institutions." Possibly both of these Penn- 
sylvania financiers were right under the conditions of the 
time; but it is at least significant that capital and labor entered 
upon a new era as the end of the free lands approached. A 
contemporary of Gallatin in Congress had replied to the argu- 
ment that cheap lands would depopulate the Atlantic coast 
by saying that if a law were framed to prevent ready access to 
western lands it would be tantamount to saying that there is 
some class which must remain " and by law be obliged to serve 
the others for such wages as they pleased to give." The pas- 
sage of the arable public domain into private possession has 
raised this question in a new form and has brought forth new 
answers. This is peculiarly the era when competitive individ- 
ualism in the midst of vast unappropriated opportunities 

* [Allhough the words of these early land debates are quoted above 
in Chapter VI, they are repeated because of the light they cast upon 
the present problem.] 



318 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

changed into the monopoly of the fundamental industrial 
processes by huge aggregations of capital as the free lands dis- 
appeared. All the tendencies of the large-scale production of 
the twentieth century, all the trend to the massing of capital 
in large combinations, all of the energies of the age of steam, 
found in America exceptional freedom of action and were 
offered regions of activity equal to the states of all Western 
Europe. Here they reached their highest development. 

The decade following 1897 is marked by the work of Mr. 
Harriman and his rivals in building up the various railroads 
into a few great groups, a process that had gone so far that 
before his death Mr. Harriman was ambitious to concentrate 
them all under his single control. High finance under the 
leadership of Mr. Morgan steadily achieved the consoli- 
dation of the greater industries into trusts or combinations 
and effected a community of interests between them and a 
few dominant banking organizations, with allied insurance 
companies and trust companies. In New York City have 
been centered, as never before, the banking reserves of the 
nation, and here, by the financial management of capital and 
speculative promotion, there has grown up a unified control 
over the nation's industrial life. Colossal private fortunes 
have arisen. No longer is the per capita wealth of the nation 
a real index to the prosperity of the average man. Labor on 
the other hand has shown an increasing self-consciousness, is 
combining and increasing its demands. In a word, the old 
pioneer individualism is disappearing, while the forces of 
social combination are manifesting themselves as never before. 
The self-made man has become, in popular speech, the coal 
baron, the steel king, the oil king, the cattle king, the railroad 
magnate, the master of high finance, the monarch of trusts. 
The world has never before seen such huge fortunes exercising 
combined control over the economic life of a people, and such 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 319 

luxury as has come out of the individualistic pioneer democ- 
racy of America in the course of competitive evolution. 

At the same time the masters of industry, who control inter- 
ests which represent billions of dollars, do not admit that they 
have broken with pioneer ideals. They regard themselves as 
pioneers under changed conditions, carrying on the old work 
of developing the natural resources of the nation, compelled 
by the constructive fever in their veins, even in ill-health and 
old age and after the accumulation of wealth beyond their 
power to enjoy, to seek new avenues of action and of power, 
to chop new clearings, to find new trails, to expand the hori- 
zon of the nation's activity, and to extend the scope of their 
dominion. " This country," said the late Mr. Harriman in an 
interview a few years ago, " has been developed by a wonder- 
ful people, flush with enthusiasm, imagination and specula- 
tive bent. . . . They have been magnificent pioneers. They 
saw into the future and adapted their work to the possibilities. 
. . . Stifle that enthusiasm, deaden that imagination and pro- 
hibit that speculation by restrictive and cramping conservative 
law, and you tend to produce a moribund and conservative 
people and country." This is an appeal to the historic ideals 
of Americans who viewed the republic as the guardian of 
individual freedom to compete for the control of the natural 
resources of the nation. 

On the other hand, we have the voice of the insurgent West, 
recently given utterance in the New Nationalism of ex-President 
Roosevelt, demanding increase of federal authority to curb the 
special interests, the powerful industrial organizations, and 
the monopolies, for the sake of the conservation of our natural 
resources and the preservation of American democracy. 

The past decade has witnessed an extraordinary federal 
activity in limiting individual and corporate freedom for the 
benefit of society. To that decade belong the conservation 



320 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

congresses and the effective organization of the Forest Service, 
and the Reclamation Service. Taken together these develop- 
ments alone would mark a new era, for over three hundred 
million acres are, as a result of this policy, reserved from 
entry and sale, an area more than equal to that of all the 
states which established the constitution, if we exclude their 
western claims; and these reserved lands are held for a more 
beneficial use of their forests, minerals, arid tracts, and water 
rights, by the nation as a whole. Another example is the 
extension of the activity of the Department of Agriculture, 
which seeks the remotest regions of the earth for crops suit- 
able to the areas reclaimed by the government, maps and 
analyzes the soils, fosters the improvement of seeds and ani- 
mals, tells the farmer when and how and what to plant, and 
makes war upon diseases of plants and animals and insect pests. 
The recent legislation for pure food and meat inspection, and 
the whole mass of regulative law under the Interstate Com- 
merce clause of the constitution, further illustrates the same 
tendency. 

-Two ideals were fundamental in traditional American 
thought, ideals that developed in the pioneer era. One was 
that of individual freedom to compete unrestrictedly for 
the resources of a continent — the squatter ideal. To the 
pioneer government was an evil. The other was the ideal of 
a democracy — " government of the people, by the people 
and for the people.'.' The operation of these ideals took place 
contemporaneously with the passing into private possession of 
the free public domain and the natural resources of the United 
States. But American democracy was based on an abundance 
of free lands; these were the very conditions that shaped its 
growth and its fundamental traits. Thus time has revealed 
that these two ideals of pioneer democracy had elements of 
mutual hostility and contained the seeds of its dissolution. 



V 

SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 321 ^ 

The present finds itself engaged in the task of readjusting its 
old ideals to new conditions and is turning increasingly to 
government to pr-eserve its traditional democracy. It is not 
surprising that socialism shows noteworthy gains as elections 
continue; that parties are forming on new lines; that the 
demand for primary elections, for popular choice of senators, 
initiative, referendum, and recall, is spreading, and that the 
regions once the center of pioneer democracy exhibit these 
tendencies in the most marked degree. They are elTorts to 
find substitutes for that former safeguard of democracy, the 
disappearing free lands. They are the sequence to the extinc- 
tion of the frontier. 

It is necessary next to notice that in the midst of all this 
national energy, and contemporaneous with the tendency to 
turn to the national government for protection to democracy, 
there is clear evidence of tlie persistence and the development 
of sectionalism.^ Wliether we observe the grouping of votes 
in Congress and in general elections, or the organization and 
utterances of business leaders, or the association of scholars, 
churches, or other representatives of the things of the spirit, 
we find that American life is not only increasing in its national 
intensity but that it is integrating by sections. In part this 
is due to the factor of great spaces which make sectional rather 
than national organizationj(the line of least resistance; but, 
in part, it is also the expression of the separate economic, polit- 
ical, and social interests and the separate spiritual life of the 
various geographic provinces or sections. The votes on the 
tariff, and in general the location of the strongholds of the 
Progressive Republican movement, illustrate this fact. The 
difficulty of a national adjustment of railway rates to die 

5 [I have outlined this subject in various essays, including the article 
on " Sectionalism " in McLaughlin and Hart, '' Cyclopedia of Govern- 
ment."] 



322 TPIE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

diverse interests of different sections is another example. 
Without attempting to enter upon a more extensive discussion 
of sectionalism, I desire simply to point out that there are 
evidences that now, as formerly, the separate geographical 
interests have their leaders and spokesmen, that much Con- 
gressional legislation is determined by the contests, triumphs, 
or compromises between the rival sections, and that the real 
federal relations of the United States are shaped by the inter- 
play of sectional with national forces rather than by the rela- 
tion of State and Nation. As time goes on and the nation 
adjusts itself more durably to the conditions of the differing 
geographic sections which make it up, they are coming to a 
new self-consciousness and a revived self-assertion. Our 
national character is a composite of these sections.^ 

Obviously in attempting to indicate even a portion of the 
significant features of our recent history we have been obliged 
to take note of a complex of forces. The times are so close 
at hand that the relations between events and tendencies force 
themselves upon our attention. We have had to deal with the 
connections of geography, industrial growth, politics, and gov- 
ernment. With these we must take into consideration the 
changing social composition, the inherited beliefs and habitual 
attitude of the masses of the people, the psychology of the 
nation and of the separate sections, as well as of the leaders. 
We must see how these leaders are shaped partly by their 
time and section, and how they are in part original, creative, 
by virtue of their own genius and initiative. We cannot neg- 
lect the moral tendencies and the ideals. All are related parts 
of the same subject and can no more be properly understood 

6 [It is not impossible that they may ultimately replace the State as 
the significant administrative and legislative units. There are strong 
evidences of this tendency, such as the organization of the Federal Re- 
serve districts, and proposals for railroad administration by regions.] 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 323 

in isolation than the movement as a whole can be understood 
by neglecting some of these important factors, or by the use 
of a single method of investigation. Wliatever be the truth 
regarding European history, American history is chiefly con- 
cerned with social forces, shaping and reshaping under the 
conditions of a nation changing as it adjusts to its environ- 
ment. And this environment progressively reveals nev,^ aspects 
of itself, exerts new influences, and calls out new social organs 
and functions. 

I have undertaken this rapid survey of recent history for 
two purposes. First, because it has seemed fitting to empha- 
size the significance of American development since the pass- 
ing of the frontier, and, second, because in the observation of 
present conditions we may find assistance in our study of the 
past. 

It is a familiar doctrine that each age studies its history 
anew and with interests determined by the spirit of the time. 
Each age finds it necessary to reconsider at least some portion 
of the past, from points of view furnished by new conditions 
which reveal the influence and significance of forces not ade- 
quately known by the historians of the previous generation. 
Unquestionably each investigator and writer is influenced by 
the times in which he lives and while this fact exposes the his- 
torian to a bias, at the same time it aff'ords him new instru- 
ments and new insight for dealing with his subject. 

If recent history, then, gives new meaning to past events, 
if it has to deal with the rise into a commanding position of 
forces, the origin and growth of which may have been inade- 
quately described or even overlooked by historians of the 
previous generation, it is important to study the present and 
the recent past, not only for themselves but also as the source 
of new hypotheses, new lines of inquiry, new mlieria of the 
perspective of the remoter past. And, moreover, a just public 



324 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

opinion and a statesmanlike treatment of present problems 
demand that they be seen in their historical relations in order 
that history may hold the lamp for conservative reform. 

Seen from the vantage-ground of present developments what 
new light falls upon past event::! When we consider what the 
Mississippi Valley has come to be in American life, and when 
we consider what it is yet to be, the young Washington, cross- 
ing the snows of the wilderness to summon the French to evac- 
uate the portals of the great valley, becomes the herald of an 
empire. When we recall the huge industrial power that has 
centered at Pittsburgh, Braddock's advance to the forks of the 
Ohio takes on new n:eaning. Even in defeat, he opened a 
road to what is now the center of the world's industrial energy. 
The modifications which England proposed in 1794 to John 
Jay in the northwestern boundary of the United States from 
the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi, seemed to him, 
doubtless, significant chiefly as a matter of principle and as a 
question of the retention or loss of beaver grounds. The his- 
torians hardly notice the proposals. But they involved, in 
fact, the ownership of the richest and most extensive deposits 
of iron ore in America, the all-important source of a funda- 
m.ental industry of the United States, the occasion for the rise 
of some of the most influential forces of our time. 

What continuity and meaning are furnished by the outcome 
in present times of the movements of minor political parties 
and reform agitations! To the historian they have often 
seemed to be mere curious side eddies, vexatious distractions 
to the course of his literary craft as it navigated the stream 
of historical tendency. And yet, by the revelation of the pres- 
ent, what seemed to be side eddies have not seldom proven 
to be the concealed entrances to the main current, and the 
course which seemed the central one has led to blind channels 
and stagnant waters, important in their day, but cut off like ox- 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 325 

bow lakes from the mighty river of historical progress by the 
mere permanent and compelling forces of the neglected cur- 
rents. 

We may trace the contest between the capitalist and the 
democratic pioneer from the earliest colonial days. It is influ- 
ential in colonial parties. It is seen in the vehement protests 
of Kentucky frontiersmen in petition after petition to the Con- 
gress of the Confederation against the " nabobs " and men of 
wealth who took out titles to the pioneers' farms while they 
themselves were too busy defending those farms from the 
Indians to perfect their claims. It is seen in the attitude of 
the Ohio Valley, in its backwoods days before the rise of the 
V/hig party, as when in 1811 Henry Clay denounced the Bank 
of the United States as a corporation which throve on special 
privileges — " a special association of favored individuals 
taken from the mass of society, and invested with exemplioiis 
and surrounded by immunities and privileges." Benton voiced 
the same contest twenty years later when he denounced the 
bank as 

a company of private individuals, many of them 
foreigners, and the mass of them residing in a 
remote and narrow corner of the Union, uncon- 
nected by any sympathy with the fertile regions 
of the Great Valley in which the natural power 
of this Union, the power of numbers, will be found 
to reside long before the renewed term of the 
second charter would expire. 

"And where," he asked, "would all this power and money 
center? In the great cities of the Northeast, which have been 
for forty years and that by force of federal legislation, the 
lion's den of Southern and Western money — that den into 



326 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

which all the tracks point inv/ard; from which the returning 
track of a solitary dollar has never yet been seen." Declar- 
ing, in words that have a very modern sound, that the bank 
tended to multiply nabobs and paupers, and that " a great 
moneyed power is favorable to great capitalists, for it is the 
principle of capital to favor capital," he appealed to the fact 
of the country's extent and its sectional divergences against 
the nationalizing of capital. 

What a condition for a confederacy of states! 
What grounds for alarm and terrible apprehension 
when in a confederacy of such vast extent, so many 
rival comm.ercial cities, so much sectional jealousy, 
such violent political parties, such fierce contests 
for power, there should be but one moneyed tri- 
bunal before which all the rival and contending ele- 
ments must appear. 

Even more vehement were the words of Jackson in 1837. " It 
is now plain," he wrote, " that the war is to be carried on by 
the monied aristocracy of the few against the democracy of 
numbers; the [prosperous] to make the honest laborers hewers 
of wood and drawers of water through the credit and paper 
system." 

Van Buren's administration is usually passed hastily over 
with hardly more than mention of his Independent Treasury 
plan, and with particular consideration of the slavery dis- 
cussion. But some of the most important movements in Amer- 
ican social and political history began in these years of Jack- 
son and Van Buren. Read the demands of the obscure labor 
papers and the reports of labor's open-air meetings anew, and 
you will find in the utterances of so-called labor visionaries 
and the Locofoco champions of " equal rights for all and 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 327 

special privileges for none," like Evans and Jacques, Byrdsall 
and Leggett, the finger points to the currents that now make 
the main channel of our history; you will find in them some ; 
of the important planks of the platforms of the triumphant i 
parties of our own day. As Professor Commons has shown 
by his papers and the documents which he has published on 
labor history, an idealistic but widespread and influential 
humanitarian movement, strikingly similar to that of the pres- 
ent, arose in the years between 1830 and 1850, dealing with 
social forces in American life, animated by a desire to apply 
the public lands to social amelioration, eager to find new 
forms of democratic development. But the flood of the slav- 
ery struggle swept all of these movements into its mighty 
inundation for the time. After the war, other influences 
delayed the revival of the movement. The railroads opened 
the wide prairies after 1850 and made it easy to reach them; 
and decade after decade new sections were reduced to the 
purposes of civilization and to the advantages of the common 
man as well as the promotion of great individual fortunes. 
The nation centered its interests in the development of the 
West. It is only in our own day that this humanitarian demo- 
cratic wave has reached the level of those earlier years. But 
in the meantime there are clear evidences of the persistence of 
the forces, even though under strange guise. Read the plat- 
forms of the Greenback-Labor, the Granger, and the Populist 
parties, and you will find in those platforms, discredited and 
reprobated by the major parties of the time, the basic pro- 
posals of the Democratic party after its revolution under the 
leadership of Mr. Bryan, and of the Republican party after 
its revolution by Mr. Roosevelt. The Insurgent movement 
is so clearly related to the areas and elements that gave strength 
to this progressive assertion of old democratic ideals with 
new weapons, that it must be regarded as the organized refusal 



328 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

of these persistent tendencies to be checked by the advocates of 
more moderate measures. 

I have dealt with these fragments of party history, not, of 
course, with the purpose of expressing any present judgment 
upon them, but to emphasize and give concreteness to the fact 
that there is disclosed by present events a new significance to 
these contests of radical democracy and conservative interests; 
that they are rather a continuing expression of dgep-seated 
forces than fragmentary and sporadic curios for the historical 
museum. 

If we should survey the history of our lands from a similar 
point of view, considering the relations of legislation and 
administration of the public domain to the structure of Amer- 
ican democracy, it would yield a return far beyond that offered 
by the formal treatment of the subject in most of our histories. 
We should find in the squatter doctrines and practices, the 
seizure of the best soils, the taking of public timber on the 
theory of a right to it by the labor expended on it, fruitful 
material for understanding the atmosphere and ideals under 
which the great corporations developed the West. Men like 
Senator Benton and Delegate Sibley in successive generations 
defended the trespasses of the pioneer and the lumberman 
upon the public forest lands, and denounced the paternal gov- 
ernment that " harassed " these men, who were engaged in 
what we should call stealing government timber. It is evi- 
dent that at some time between the middle of the nineteenth 
century and the present time, when we impose jail sentences 
upon Congressmen caught in such violations of the land laws, 
a change came over the American conscience and the civic 
ideals were modified. That our great industrial enterprises 
developed in the midst of these changing ideals is important 
to recall when we write the history of their activity. 

We should find also that we cannot understand the land 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 329 

question without seeing its relations to the struggle of sections 
and classes bidding against each other and finding in the pub- 
lic domain a most important topic of political bargaining. 
We should find, too, that the settlement of unlike geographic 
areas in the course of the nation's progress resulted in changes 
in the effect of the land laws; that a system intended for the 
humid prairies was ill-adjusted to the grazing lands and coal 
fields and to the forests in the days of large-scale exploitation 
by corporations commanding great capital. Thus changing 
geographic factors as well as the changing character of the 
forces which occupied the public domain must be considered, 
if we would understand the bearing of legislation and policy 
in this field.^ It is fortunate that suggestive studies of democ- 
racy and the land policy have already begun to appear. 

The whole subject of American agriculture viewed in rela- 
tion to the economic, political, and social life of the nation 
has important contributions to make. If, for example, we study 
the maps showing the transition of the wheat belt from the 
East to the West, as the virgin soils were conquered and made 
new bases for destructive competition with the older wheat 
States, we shall see how deeply they affected not only land 
values, railroad building, the movement of population, and 
the supply of cheap food, but also how the regions once 
devoted to single cropping of wheat were forced to turn to 
varied and intensive agriculture and to diversified industry, 
and we shall see also how these transformations affected party 
politics and even the ideals of the Americans of the regions 
thus changed. We shall find in the over-production of wheat 
in the provinces thus rapidly colonized, and in the over-pro- 
duction of silver in the mountain provmces which were con- 
temporaneously exploited, important explanations of the pecul- 

■^ [See R. G. Wellington, "Public Lands, 1820-1840"; G. M. Stephen- 
son, "Public Lands, 1841-1862"; J. Ise, "Forest Policy."] 



330 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

iar form which American politics took in the period when 
Mr. Bryan mastered the Democratic party, just as we shall 
find in the opening of the new gold fields in the years imme- 
diately following, and in the passing of the era of almost free 
virgin wheat soils, explanations of the more recent period 
when high prices are giving new energy and aggressiveness to 
the demands of the new American industrial democracy. 

Enough has been said, it may be assumed, to make clear 
the point which I am trying to elucidate, namely that a com- 
prehension of the United States of to-day, an understanding 
of the rise and progress of the forces which have made it what 
it is, demands that we should rework our history from the 
new points of view afforded by the present. If this is done, it 
I will be seen, for example, that the progress of the struggle 
between North and South over slavery and the freed negro, 
which held the principal place in American interest in the 
two decades after 1850, was, after all, only one of the interests 
in the time. The pages of the Congressional debates, the con- 
temporary newspapers, the public documents of those twenty 
years, remain a rich mine for those who will seek therein the 
sources of movements dominant in the present day. 

The final consideration to which I ask your attention in this 
discussion of social forces in American life, is with reference 
to the mode of investigating them and the bearing of these 
investigations upon the relations and the goal of history. It 
has become a precedent, fairly well established by the distin- 
guished scholars who have held the office which I am about to 
lay down, to state a position with reference to the relations 
of history and its sister-studies, and even to raise the question 
of the attitude of the historian toward the laws of thermody- 
namics and to seek to find the key of historical development 
or of historical degradation. It is not given to all to bend 
the bow of Ulysses. I shall attempt a lesser task. 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 331 

We may take some lessons from the scientist. He has 
enriched knowledge especially in recent years by attacking 
the no-man's lands left unexplored by the too sharp delimi- 
tation of spheres of activity. These new conquests have been 
especially achieved by the combination of old sciences. Phys- 
ical chemistry, electro-chemistry, geo-physics, astro-physics, 
and a variety of other scientic unions have led to audacious 
hypotheses, veritable flashes of vision, which open new regions 
of activity for a generation of investigators. Moreover they 
have promoted such investigations by furnishing new instru- 
ments of research. Now in some respects there is an analogy 
between geology and history. The new geologist aims to 
describe the inorganic earth dynamically in terms of iiatural 
law, using chemistry, physics, mathematics, and even botany 
and zoology so far as they relate to paleontology. But he does 
not insist that the relative importance of physical or chemical 
factors shall be determined before he applies the methods 
and data of these sciences to his problem. Indeed, he has 
learned that a geological area is too complex a thing to be 
reduced to a single explanation. He has abandoned the single 
hypothesis for the multiple hypothesis. He creates a whole 
family of possible explanations of a given problem and thus 
avoids the warping influence of partiality for a simple theory. 

Have we not here an illustration of what is possible and 
necessary for the historian? Is it not well, before attempting 
to decide whether history requires an economic interpretation, 
or a psychological, or any other ultimate interpretation, to 
recognize that the factors in human society are varied and 
complex; that the political historian handling his subject in 
isolation is certain to miss fundamental facts and relations in 
his treatment of a given age or nation; that the economic his- 
torian is exposed to the same danger; and so of all of the 
other special historians? 



332 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Those who insist that history is simply the effort to tell the 
thing exactly as it was, to state the facts, are confronted with 
the difficulty that the fact which they would represent is not 
planted on the solid ground of fixed conditions; it is in the 
midst and is itself a part of the changing currents, the com- 
plex and interacting influences of the time, deriving its signifi- 
cance as a fact from its relations to the deeper-seated move- 
ments of the age, movements so gradual that often only the 
passing years can reveal the truth about the fact and its right 
to a place on the historian's page. 

The economic historian is in danger of making his analysis 
and his statement of a law on the basis of present conditions 
and then passing to history for justificatory appendixes to hi3 
conclusions. An American economist of high rank has re- 
cently expressed his conception of " the full relation of eco- 
Viomic theory, statistics, and history" in these words: 

A principle is formulated by a priori reason- 
ing concerning facts of common experience; it is 
then tested by statistics and promoted to the rank 
of a known and acknowledged truth; illustrations 
of its action are then found in narrative history 
and, on the other hand, the economic law becomes 
the interpreter of records that would otherwise be 
confusing and comparatively valueless; the law 
itself derives its final confirmation from the illus- 
trations of its working which the records afford; 
but what is at least of equal importance is the 
parallel fact that the law affords the decisive 
test of the correctness of those assertions concern- 
ing the causes and the effects of past events which 
it is second nature to make and which historians 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 333 

almost invariably do make in connection with their 
narrations.^ 

There is much in this statement by which the historian may 
profit, but he may doubt also whether the past should serve 
merely as the " illustration " by which to confirm the law 
deduced from common experience by a priori reasoning tested 
by statistics. In fact the pathway of history is strewn with 
the wrecks of the " known and acknowledged truths " of eco- 
nomic law, due not only to defective analysis and imperfect 
statistics, but also to the lack of critical historical methods, 
of insufficient historical-mindedness on the part of the econ- 
omist, to failure lo give due attention to the relativity and 
transiency of the conditions from which his laws were deduced. 

But the point on which I would lay stress is this. The 
economist, the political scientist, the psychologist, the sociol- 
ogist, the geographer, the student of literature, of art, of relig- 
ion — all the allied laborers in the study of society — have 
contributions to make to the equipment of the historian. These 
contributions are partly of material, partly of tools, partly 
of new points of view, new hypotheses, new suggestions of rela- 
tions, causes, and emphasis. Each of these special students is 
in some danger of bias by his particular point of view, by 
his exposure to see simply the thing in which he is primarily 
interested, and also by his effort to deduce the universal laws 
of his separate science. The historian, on the other hand, is 
exposed to the danger of dealing with the complex and inter- 
acting social forces of a period or of a country, from some 
single point of view to which his special training or interest 
inclines him. If the truth is to be made known, the historian 

8 Professor J. B. Clark, in Commons, ed., "Documentary History of t 
American Industrial Society," I. 43^4. 



334 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

must so far familiarize himself with the work, and equip him- 
self with the training of his sister-subjects that he can at least 
avail himself of their results and in some reasonable degree 
master the essential tools of their trade. And the followers 
of the sister-studies must likewise familiarize themselves and 
their students with the work and the methods of the historians, 
and cooperate in the difficult task. 

It is necessary that the American historian shall aim at this 
equipment, not so much that he may possess the key to history 
or satisfy himself in regard to its ultimate laws. At present 
a different duty is before him. He must see in American 
society with its vast spaces, its sections equal to European 
nations, its geographic influences, its brief period of develop- 
ment, its variety of nationalities and races, its extraordinary 
industrial growth under the conditions of freedom, its insti- 
tutions, culture, ideals, social psychology, and even its relig- 
ions forming and changing almost under his eyes, one of the 
richest fields ever offered for the preliminary recognition and 
study of the forces that operate and interplay in the making 
of society. 



XIII 

Middle Western Pioneer Democracy ^ 

In time of war, when all that this nation has stood for, all 
the things in which it passionately believes, are at stake, we 
have met to dedicate this beautiful home for history. 

There is a fitness in the occasion. It is for historic ideals 
that we are fighting. If this nation is one for which we should 
pour out our savings, postpone our differences, go hungry, 
and even give up life itself, it is not because it is a rich, 
extensive, well-fed and populous nation; it is because from 
its early days America has pressed onward toward a goal 
of its own; that it has followed an ideal, the ideal of a democ- 
racy developing under conditions unlike those of any other 
age or country. 

We are fighting not for an Old World ideal, not for an 
abstraction, not for a philosophical revolution. Broad and 
generous as are our sympathies, widely scattered in origin as 
are our people, keenly as we feel the call of kinship, the 
thrill of sympathy with the stricken nations across the Atlantic, 
we are fighting for the historic ideals of the United States, 
for the continued existence of the type of society in which 
we believe, because we have proved it good, for the things 
which drew European exiles to our shores, and which inspired 
the hopes of the pioneers. 

1 An address delivered at the dedication of the building of the Stale 
Historical Society of Minnesota, May 11, 1918. Printed by permission 

of the Society. 

335 



336 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

We are at war that the history of the United States, rich 
with the record of high human purposes, and of faith in the 
destiny of the common man under freedom, filled with the 
promises of a better world, may not become the lost and 
tragic story of a futile dream. 

Yes, it is an American ideal and an American example for 
which we fight; but in that ideal and example lies medicine 
for the healing of the nations. It is the best we have to give 
to Europe, and it is a matter of vital import that we shall 
safeguard and preserve our power to serve the world, and 
not be overwhelmed in the flood of imperialistic force that 
wills the death of democracy and would send the freeman 
under the yoke. Essential as are our contributions of wealth, 
the work of our scientists, the toil of our farmers and our 
workmen in factory and shipyard, priceless as is the stream 
of young American manhood which we pour forth to stop the 
flood which flows like moulten lava across the green fields and 
peaceful hamlets of Europe toward the sea and turns to ashes 
and death all that it covers, these contributions have their 
deeper meaning in the American spirit. They are born of the 
love of Democracy. 

Long ago in prophetic words Walt Whitman voiced the 
meaning of our present sacrifices: 

" Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy, 

Of value is thy freight, ' lis not the Present only. 

The Past is also stored in thee. 

Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the Western 

Continent alone, 
Earth's resume entire floats on thy keel, ship, is steadied by thy 

spars, 
With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim 

with thee. 
With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st 

the other conlinents, 
Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant." 



MIDDLE WESTERN PIONEER DEMOCRACY 337 

Shortly before the Civil War, a great German, exiled 
from his native land for his love of freedom, came from his 
new home among the pioneers of the Middle West to set forth 
in Faneuil Hall, the " cradle of liberty," in Boston, his vision 
of the young America that was forming in the West, " the last 
depository of the hopes of all true friends of humanity." 
Speaking of the contrast between the migrations to the Missis- 
sippi Valley and those of the Old World in other centuries, 
he said: 

It is now not a barbarous multitude pouncing 
upon old and decrepit empires, not a violent con- 
cussion of tribes accompanied by all the horrors 
of general destruction, but we see the vigorous 
elements — peaceably congregating and mingling 
together on virgin soil — ; led together by the 
irresistible attraction of free and broad principles; 
undertaking to commence a new era in the history 
of the world, without first destroying the results 
of the progress of past periods; undertaking to 
found a cosmopolitan nation without marching 
over the dead bodies of slain millions. 

If Carl Schurz had lived to see the outcome of that Ger- 
many from which he was sent as an exile, in the days when 
Prussian bayonets dispersed the legislatures and stamped out 
the beginnings of democratic rule in his former country, could 
he have better pictured the contrasts between the Prussian 
and the American spirit? He went on to say: 

Thus was founded the great colony of free 
humanity, which has not old England alone, but 
the ivorld for its mother country. And in the col- 



338 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

ony of free humanity, whose mother country is 
the world, they established the Republic of equal 
rights where the title of manhood is the title to 
citizenship. My friends, if I had a thousand 
tongues, and a voice as strong as the thunder of 
heaven, they would not be sufficient to impress 
upon your minds forcibly enough the greatness 
of this idea, the overshadowing glory of this result. 
This was the dream of the truest friends of man 
from the beginning; for this the noblest blood of 
martyrs has been shed; for this has mankind 
waded through seas of blood and tears. There it 
is now; there it stands, the noble fabric in all the 
splendor of reality. 

It is in a solemn and inspiring time, therefore, that we meet 
to dedicate this building, and the occasion is fitting to the time. 
We may now see, as never before, the deeper significance, the 
larger meaning of these pioneers, whose plain lives and homely 
annals are glorified as a part of the story of the building of 
a better system of social justice under freedom, a broader, and 
as we fervently hope, a more enduring foundation for the 
welfare and progress under individual liberty of the common 
man, an example of federation, of peaceful adjustments by 
compromise and concession under a self-governing Republic, 
where sections replace nations over a Union as large as 
Europe, where party discussions take the place of warring 
countries, where the Pax Americana furnishes an example for 
a better world. 

As our forefathers, the pioneers, gathered in their neigh- 
borhood to raise the log cabin, and sanctified it by the name 
of home, the dwelling place of pioneer ideals, so we meet 
to celebrate the raising of this home, this shrine of Minne- 



MIDDLE WESTERN PIONEER DEMOCRACY 339 

sola's historic life. It symbolizes the conviction that the past 
and the future of this people are tied together; that this 
Historical Society is the keeper of the records of a note- 
worthy movement in the progress of mankind; that these 
records are not unmeaning and antiquarian, but even in their 
details are worthy of preservation for their revelation of the 
beginnings of society in the midst of a nalion caught by the 
vision of a better future for the world. 

Let me repeat the words of Harriet Martineau, who por- 
trayed the American of the thirties: 

I regard the American people as a great embryo 
poet, now moody, now wild, but bringing out 
results of absolute good sense; restless and way- 
ward in action, but with deep peace at his heart; 
exulting that he has caught the true aspect of 
things past and the depth of futurity which lies 
before him, wherein to create sometliing so mag- 
nificent as the world has scarcely begun to dream 
of. There is the strongest hope of a nation that 
is capable of being possessed with an idea. 

And recall her appeal to the American people to "cherish 
their high democratic hope, their faith in man. The older 
they grow the more they must reverence the dreams of tlieir 
youth." 

The dreams of their youth! Here they shall be preserved, 
and the achievements as well as the aspirations of the men 
who made the State, the men who built on their foundations, 
the men with large vision and power of action, the lesser men 
in the mass, the leaders who served the State and nation with 
devotion to the cause. Here shall be preserved the record of 
the men who failed to see the larger vision and worked impa- 



340 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

tiently with narrow or selfish or class ends, as well as of 
those who labored with patience and sympathy and mutual 
concession, with readiness to make adjustments and to sub- 
ordinate their immediate interests to the larger good and the 
immediate safety of the nation. 

In the archives of such an old institution as that of the 
Historical Society of Massachusetts, whose treasures run to 
the beginnings of the Puritan colonization, the students can- 
not fail to find the evidence that a State Historical Society 
is a Book of Judgment wherein is made up the record of a 
people and its leaders. So, as time unfolds, shall be the 
collections of this Society, the depository of the material 
that shall preserve the memory of this people. Each section 
of this widely extended and varied nation has its own pecul- 
iar past, its special form of society, its traits and its leaders. 
It were a pity if any section left its annals solely to the col- 
lectors of a remote region, and it were a pity if its collections 
were not transformed into printed documents and monographic 
studies which can go to the libraries of all the parts of the 
Union and thus enable the student to see the nation as a whole 
in its past as well as in its present. 

This Society finds its special field of activity in a great 
State of the Middle West, so new, as history reckons time, that 
its annals are still predominantly those of the pioneers, but so 
rapidly growing that already the era of the pioneers is a part 
of the history of the past, capable of being handled objec- 
tively, seen in a perspective that is not possible to the observer 
of the present conditions. 

Because of these facts I have taken as the special theme of 
this address the Middle Western Pioneer Democracy, which I 
would sketch in some of its outstanding aspects, and chiefly 
in the generation before the Civil War, for it was from those 



MIDDLE WESTERN PIONEER DEMOCRACY 341 

pioneers that the later colonization to the newer parts of the 
Mississippi Valley derived much of their traits, and from 
whom large numbers of them came. 

The North Central States as a whole is a region compa- 
rable to all of Central Europe. Of these States, a large part 
of the old Northwest,— Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and 
Wisconsin; and their sisters beyond the Mississippi — Mis- 
souri, Iowa and Minnesota — were still, in the middle of the 
nineteenth century, the home of an essentially pioneer society. 
Within the lifetime of many living men, Wisconsin was called 
the '' Far West," and Minnesota was a land of the Indian and 
the fur traders, a wilderness of forest and prairie beyond the 
"edge of cultivation." That portion of this great region 
which was still in the pioneering period of settlement by 1850 
was alone about as extensive as the old thirteen States, or 
Germany and Austria-Hungary combined. The region was a 
huge geographic mold for a new society, modeled by nature 
on the scale of the Great Lakes, the Ohio Valley, the upper 
Mississippi and the Missouri. Simple and majestic in its vast 
outlines it was graven into a variety that in its detail also had 
a largeness of design. From the Great Lakes extended the 
massive glacial sheet which covered that mighty basin and 
laid down treasures of soil. Vast forests of pine shrouded 
its upper zone, breaking into hardwood and the oak openings 
as they neared the ocean-like expanses of the prairies. For- 
ests again along the Ohio Valley, and beyond, to the west, lay 
the levels of the Great Plains. Within the earth were unex- 
ploited treasures of coal and lead, copper and iron in such 
form and quantity as were to revolutionize the industrial proc- 
esses of the world. But nature's revelations are progressive, 
and it was rather the marvelous adaptation of the soil to the 
raising of corn and wheat that drew the pioneers to this land 



342 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

of promise, and made a new era of colonization. In the unity 
with variety of this pioneer empire and in its broad levels we 
have a promise of its society. 

First had come the children of the interior of the South, 
and with ax and rifle in hand had cut their clearings in the 
forest, raised their log cabins, fought the Indians and by 1830 
had pushed their way to the very edge of the prairies along 
the Ohio and Missouri Valleys, leaving unoccupied most of 
the Basin of the Great Lakes. 

These slashers of the forest, these self-sufficing pioneers, 
raising the corn and live stock for their own need, living scat- 
tered and apart, had at first small interest in town life or a 
share in markets. They were passionately devoted to the ideal 
of equality, but it was an ideal which assumed that under free 
conditions in the midst of unlimited resources, the homogen- 
eous society of the pioneers must result in equality. What 
they objected to was arbitrary obstacles, artificial limitations 
upon the freedom of each member of this frontier folk to 
work out his own career without fear or favor. Wliat they 
instinctively opposed was the crystallization of differences, 
the monopolization of opportunity and the fixing of that 
monopoly by government or by social customs. The road 
must be open. The game must be played according to the 
rules. There must be no artificial stifling of equality of oppor- 
tunity, no closed doors to the able, no stopping the free game 
before it was played to the end. More than that, there was 
an unformulated, perhaps, but very real feeling, that mere 
success in the game, by which the abler men were able to 
achieve preeminence gave to the successful ones no right to 
look down upon their neighbors, no vested title to assert 
superiority as a matter of pride and to the diminution of the 
equal right and dignity of the less successful. 

If this democracy of Southern pioneers, this Jacksonian 



MIDDLE WESTERN PIONEER DEMOCRACY 343 

democracy, was, as its socialist critics have called it, in reality 
a democracy of " expectant capitalists," it was not one which 
expected or acknowledged on the part of the successful ones 
the right to harden their triumphs into the rule of a privileged 
class. In short, if it is indeed true that the backwoods democ- 
racy was based upon equality of opportunity, it is also true 
that it resented the conception that opportunity under com- 
petition should result in the hopeless inequality, or rule of 
class. Ever a new clearing must be possible. And because 
the wilderness seemed so unending, the m.enace to the enjoy- 
ment of this ideal seemed rather to be feared from government, 
within or without, than from the operations of internal evolu- 
tion. 

From the first, it became evident that these men had means 
of supplementing their individual activity by informal com- 
binations. One of the things that impressed all early travel- 
ers in the United States was the capacity for extra-legal, 
voluntary association.^' This was natural enough; in all Amer- 
ica we can study the process by which in a new land social 
customs form and crystallize into law. We can even see how 
the personal leader becomes the governmental oflScial. This 
power of the newly arrived pioneers to join together for a com- 
mon end without the intervention of governmental institutions 
was one of their marked characteristics. The log rolling, 
the house-raising, the husking bee, the apple paring, and the 
squatters' associations whereby they protected themselves 
against the speculators in securing title to their clearings on 
the public domain, the camp meeting, the mining camp, the 
vigilantes, the cattle-raisers' associations, the "gentlemen's 
agreements," are a few of the indications of this attitude. It 
is well to emphasize this American trait, because in a modi- 

2 See De Tocqueville's interesting appreciation of this American phe- 



344 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

fied way it has come to be one of the most characteristic and 
important features of the United States of to-day. America 
does through informal association and undorstandin^^s on tlie 
part of the j cople many of tlie thln<i;e which in the Old World 
are and can be done only by governmental intervention and 
compulsion. These associations were in America not due to 
immemorial custom of tribe or village community. They 
were extemporized by voluntary action. 

The actions of these associations had an authority cikin to 
that of law. They were usually not so much evidences of a 
disrespect for law and order as the only means by which real 
law and order were possible in a region where settlement and 
society had gone in advance of tlie institutions and instru- 
mentalities of organized society. 

Because of tliese elements of individualistic competition and 
tlie power of spontaneous association, pioneers were responsive 
to leadership. The backwoodsmen knew that under the freo 
opportunities of his life the abler man would reveal himself, 
and show them the way. By free choice and not by compul- 
sion, by spontaneous impulse, and not by the domination of 
a caste, they rallied around a cause, they supported an issue. 
They yielded to the principle of government by agreement, 
and they hated the doctrine of autocracy even before it gained 
a name. 

They looked forward to the extension of their Amer- 
ican principles to the Old World and their keenest apprehen- 
sions came from the possibility of the extension of the Old 
World's system of arbitrary rule, its class wars and rivalries 
and interventions to the destruction of the free States and 
democratic institutions which they were building in the for- 
ests of America. 

If we add to these aspects of early backwoods democracy, 
its spiritual qualities, we shall more easily understand them. 



MIDDLE WESTERN PIONEER DEMOCRACY 345 

These men were emotional. As they wrested their clearing 
from the woods and from the savages who surrounded them, 
as they expanded that clearing and saw the beginnings of com- 
monwealths, where only little communities had been, and as 
they saw these commonwealths touch hands with each other 
along the great course of the Mississippi River, they became 
enthusiastically optimistic and confident of the continued 
expansion of this democracy. They had faith in themselves 
and their destiny. And that optimistic faith was responsible 
both for their confidence in their own ability to rule and for 
the passion for expansion. They looked to the future. 
"Others appeal to history: an American appeals to prophecy; 
and with Malthus in one hand and a map of the back country 
in the other, he boldly defies us to a comparison with America 
as she is to be," said a London periodical in 182L Just 
because, perhaps, of the usual isolation of their lives, when 
they came together in associations whether of the camp meet- 
ing or of the political gathering, they felt the influence of a 
common emotion and enthusiasm. Whether Scotch-Irish Pres- 
byterian, Baptist, or Methodist, these people saturated their 
religion and their politics with feeling. Both the stump and 
the pulpit were centers of energy, electric cells capable of 
starting widespreading fires. They felt both their religion and 
their democracy, and were ready to fight for it. 

This democracy was one that involved a real feeling of social 
comradeship among its widespread members. Justice Catron, 
who came from Arkansas to the Supreme Court in the presi- 
dency of Jackson, said: "The people of New Orleans and 
St. Louis are next neighbors — if we desire to know a man in 
any quarter of the union we inquire of our next neighbor, 
who but the other day lived by him." Exaggerated as this is, 
it nevertheless had a surprising measure of truth for the 
Middle West as well. For the Mississippi River was the great 



346 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

highway down which groups of pioneers like Abraham Lin- 
coln, on their rafts and flat boats, brought the little neighbor- 
hood surplus. After the steamboat came to the western waters 
the voyages up and down by merchants and by farmers shift- 
ing their homes, brought people into contact with each other 
over wide areas. 

This enlarged neighborhood democracy was determined not 
by a reluctant admission that under the law one man is as 
good as another; it was based upon "good fellowship," sym- 
pathy and understanding. They were of a stock, moreover, 
which sought new trails and were ready to follow where the 
trail led, innovators in society as well as finders of new 
lands. 

By 1830 the Southern inundation ebbed and a different tide 
flowed in from the northeast by way of the Erie Canal and 
steam navigation on the Great Lakes to occupy the zone 
unreached by Southern settlement. This new tide spread along 
the margins of the Great Lakes, found the oak openings and 
small prairie islands of Southern Michigan and Wisconsin; 
followed the fertile forested ribbons along the river courses 
far into the prairie lands; and by the end of the forties began 
to venture into the margin of the open prairie. 

In 1830 the Middle West contained a little over a million 
and a half people; in 1840, over three and a third millions; 
in 1850, nearly five and a half millions. Although in 1830 
the North Atlantic States numbered between three and four 
times as many people as the Middle West, yet in those two 
decades the Middle West made an actual gain of several hun- 
dred thousand more than did the old section. Counties in 
the newer states rose from a few hundred to ten or fifteen 
thousand people in the space of less than five years. Sud- 
denly, with astonishing rapidity and volume, a new people was 
forming with varied elements, ideals and institutions drawn 



MIDDLE WESTERN PIONEER DEMOCRACY 347 

from all over this nation and from Europe. They were con- 
fronted with the problem of adjusting different stocks, varied 
customs and habits, to their new home. 

In comparison with the Ohio Valley, the peculiarity of the 
occupation of the northern zone of the Middle West, lay in 
the fact that the native element was predominantly from the 
older settlements of the Middle West itself and from New 
York and New England. But it was from the central and 
western counties of New York and from the western and 
northern parts of New England, the rural regions of declining 
agricultural prosperity, that the bulk of this element came. 

Thus the influence of the Middle West stretched into the 
Northeast, and attracted a farming population already sufifer- 
ing from western competition. The advantage of abundant, 
fertile, and cheap land, the richer agricultural returns, and 
especially the opportunities for youth to rise in all the trades 
and professions, gave strength to this competition. By it New 
England was profoundly and permanently modified. 

This Yankee stock carried with it a habit of community 
life, in contrast with the individualistic democracy of the 
Southern element. The colonizing land companies, the town, 
the school, the church, the feeling of local unity, furnished 
the evidences of this instinct for com.munities. This instinct 
was accompanied by the creation of cities, the production 
of a surplus for market, the reaching out to connections with 
the trading centers of the East, the evolution of a more com- 
plex and at the same time a more integrated industrial society 
than that of the Southern pioneer. 

But they did not carry with them the unmodified New Eng- 
land institutions and traits. They came at a time and from a 
people less satisfied with the old order than were dieir 
neighbors in the East. They were the young men with initia- 
tive, with discontent; the New York element especially was af- 



348 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

fected by the radicalism of Locofoco democracy which was in 
itself a protest against the established order. 

The winds of the prairies swept away almost at once a 
mass of old habits and prepossessions. Said one of these 
pioneers in a letter to friends in the East: 

If you value ease more than money or pros- 
perity, don't come. . . . Hands are too few for 
the work, houses for the inhabitants, and days for 
the day's work to be done. . . . Next if you 
can't stand seeing your old New England ideas, 
ways of doing, and living and in fact, all of the 
good old Yankee fashions knocked out of shape 
and altered, or thrown by as unsuited to the cli- 
mate, don't be caught out here. But if you can 
bear grief with a smile, can put up with a scale 
of accommodations ranging from the soft side of 
a plank before the fire (and perhaps three in a 
bed at that) down through the middling and infe- 
rior grades; if you are never at a loss for ways to 
do the most unpracticable things without tools; 
if you can do all this and some more come on. 
... It is a universal rule here to help one another, 
each one keeping an eye single to his own business.'* 

They knew that they were leaving many dear associations 
of the old home, giving up many of the comforts of life, sacri- 
ficing things which those who remained thought too vital to 
civilization to be left. But they were not mere materialists 
ready to surrender all that life is worth for immediate gain. 
They were idealists themselves, sacrificing the ease of the 
immediate future for the welfare of their children, and con- 
\syinced of the possibility of helping to bring about a better 



MIDDLE WESTERN PIONEER DEMOCRACY 349 

social order and a freer life. They were social idealists. But 
they based their ideals on trust in the common man and the 
readiness to make adjustments, not on the rule of a benevolent 
despot or a controlling class. 

The attraction of this new home reached also into the Old 
World and gave a new hope and new impulses to the people 
of Germany, of England, of Ireland, and of Scandinavia. 
Both economic influences and revolutionary discontent pro- 
moted German migration at this time; economic causes brought 
the larger volume, but the quest for liberty brought the leaders, 
many of whom were German political exiles. While the latter 
urged, with varying degrees of emphasis, that their own con- 
tribution should be preserved in their new surroundings, and 
a few visionaries even talked of a German State in the federal 
system, what was noteworthy was the adjustment of the emi- 
grants of the thirties and forties to Middle Western conditions; 
the response to the opportunity to create a new type of society 
in which all gave and all received and no element remained 
isolated. Society v/as plastic. In the midst of more or less 
antagonism between " bowie knife Southerners," " cow-milk- 
ing Yankee Puritans," " beer-drinking Germans," " wild Irish- 
men," a process of mutual education, a giving and taking, was 
at work. In the outcome, in spite of slowness of assimilation 
where different groups v,'ere compact and isolated from tlie 
others, and a certain persistence of inherited morale, there 
was the creation of a new type, which was neither the sum of 
all its elements, nor a complete fusion in a melting pot. They 
were American pioneers, not outlying fragments of New Eng- 
land, of Germany, or of Norway. 

The Germans were most strongly represented in the Mis- 
souri Valley, in St. Louis, in Illinois opposite that city, and 
in the Lake Shore counties of eastern Wisconsin north from 
Milwaukee. In Cincinnati and Cleveland there were many 



350 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Germans, while in nearly half the counties of Ohio, the Ger- 
man immigrants and the Pennsylvania Germans held nearly or 
quite the balance of political power. The Irish came primarily 
as workers on turnpikes, canals and railroads, and tended to 
remain along such lines, or to gather in the growing cities. 
The Scandinavians, of whom the largest proportion were Nor- 
wegians, founded their colonies in Northern Illinois, and in 
Southern Wisconsin about the Fox and the head waters of 
Rock River, whence in later years they spread into Iowa, Min- 
nesota and North Dakota. 

By 1850 about one-sixth of the people of the Middle West 
were of North Atlantic birth, about one-eighth of Southern 
birth, and a like fraction of foreign birth, of whom the Ger- 
mans were twice as numerous as the Irish, and the Scandina- 
vians only slightly more numerous than the Welsh, and fewer 
than the Scotch. There were only a dozen Scandinavians in 
Minnesota. The natives of the British Islands, together with 
the natives of British North America in the Middle West, num- 
bered nearly as many as the natives of German lands. But 
in 1850 almost three-fifths of the population were natives of 
the Middle West itself, and over a third of the population 
lived in Ohio. The cities were especially a mixture of peo- 
ples. In the five larger cities of the section natives and for- 
eigners were nearly balanced. In Chicago the Irish, Ger- 
mans and natives of the North Atlantic States about equaled 
each other. But in all the other cities, the Germans exceeded 
the Irish in varying proportions. There were nearly three to 
one in Milwaukee. 

It is not merely that the section was growing rapidly and 
was made up of various stocks with many different cultures, 
sectional and European; what is more significant is that these 
elements did not remain as separate strata underneath an 
established ruling order, as was the case particularly in New 



MIDDLE WESTERN PIONEER DEMOCRACY 351 

England. All were accepted and intermingling components 
of a forming society, plastic and absorptive. This character- 
istic of the section as " a good mixer " became fixed before the 
large immigrations of the eighties. The foundations of the 
section were laid firmly in a period when the foreign elements 
were particularly free and eager to contribute to a new society 
and to receive an impress from the country which offered them 
a liberty denied abroad. Significant as is this fact, and influ- 
ential in the solution of America's present problems, it is no 
more important than the fact that in the decade before the 
Civil War, the Southern element in the Middle West had also 
had nearly two generations of direct association with the 
Northern, and had finally been engulfed in a tide of Northeast- 
ern and Old World settlers. 

/ In this society of pioneers men learned to drop their old 
national animosities. One of the Immigrant Guides of the 
fifties urged the newcomers to abandon their racial animos- 
ities. " The American laughs at these steerage quarrels," 
said the author. 

Thus the Middle West was teaching the lesson of national 
cross-fertilization instead of national enmities, the possibility 
of a newer and richer civilization, not by preserving unmodi- 
fied or isolated the old component elements, but by breaking 
down the line-fences, by merging the individual life in the 
common product — a new product, which held the promise of 
world brotherhood. If the pioneers divided their allegiance 
between various parties. Whig, Democrat, Free Soil or Repub- 
lican, it does not follow that the western Whig was like the 
eastern Whig. There was an infiltration of a western quality 
into all of these. The western Whig supported Harrison 
more because he was a pioneer than because he was a Whig. 
It saw in him a legitimate successor of Andrew Jackson. The 
campaign of 1840 was a Middle Western camp meeting on a 



352 THE FRONTIER IN A]\1ERICAN HISTORY 

huge scale. The log cabins, the cider and the coonskins were 
the symbols of the triumph of Middle Western ideas, and 
were carried with misgivings by the merchants, the bankers and 
the manufacturers of the East. In like fashion, the Middle 
Western wing of the Democratic party was as different from 
the Southern wing wherein lay its strength, as Douglas was 
from Calhoun. It had little in common with the slaveholding 
classes of the South, even while it felt the kinship of the 
pioneer with the people of the Southern upland stock from 
which so many Westerners were descended. 

In the later forties and early fifties most of the Middle 
Western States made constitutions. The debates in their con- 
,ventions and the results embodied in the constitutions them- 
selves tell the story of their political ideals. Of course, they 
based the franchise on the principle of manhood suffrage. 
But they also provided for an elective judiciary, for restric- 
tions on the borrowing power of the State, lest it fall under the 
control of what they feared as the money power, and several 
of them either provided for the extinguishment of banks of 
issue, or rigidly restrained them. Some of them exempted 
the homestead from forced sale for debt; married women's 
legal rights were prominent topics in the debates of the con- 
ventions, and Wisconsin led off by permitting the alien to vote 
after a year's residence. It welcomed the newcomer to the 
freedom and to the obligations of American citizenship. 

Although this pioneer society was preponderantly an agri- 
cultural society it was rapidly learning that agriculture alone 
was not sufficient for its life. It was developing manufac- 
tures, trade, mining, the professions, and becoming conscious 
that in a progressive modern state it was possible to pass from 
one industry to another and that all were bound by common 
ties. But it is significant that in the census of 1850, Ohio, 
out of a population of two millions, reported only a thousand 



MIDDLE WESTERN PIONEER DEMOCRACY 353 

servants, Iowa only ten in two hundred thousand and Minne- 
sota fifteen in its six thousand. 

In the intellectual life of this new democracy there was 
already the promise of original contributions even in the midst 
of the engrossing toil and hard life of the pioneer. 

The country editor was a leader of his people, not a patenl- 
insides recorder of social functions, but a vigorous and inde- 
pendent thinker and writer. The subscribers to the newspaper 
published in the section were higher in proportion to popu- 
lation than in the State of New York and not greatly inferior 
to those of New England, although such eastern papers as the 
New York Tribune had an extensive circulation throughout the 
Middle West. The agricultural press presupposed in its arti- 
cles and contributions a level of general intelligence and 
interest above that of the later farmers of the section, at 
least before at the present day. 

Farmer boys wT.lked behind the plow with their book in 
hand and sometimes forgot to turn at the end of the furrow; 
even rare boys, who, like the young Howells, " limped bare- 
foot by his father's side with his eyes on the cow and his mind 
on Cervantes and Shakespeare." 

Periodicals flourished and faded like the prairie flowers. 
Some of Emerson's best poems first appeared in one of these 
Ohio Valley magazines. But for the most part the literature 
of the region and the period was imitative or reflective of the 
common things in a not uncommon way. It is to its children 
that the Middle West had to look for the expression of its life 
and its ideals rather than to the busy pioneer who was break- 
ing a prairie farm or building up a new community. Illit- 
eracy was least among the Yankee pioneers and highest among 
the Southern element. When illiteracy is mapped for 1850 
by per-centages there appears two distinct zones, the one ex- 
tending from New England, the other from the South. 



354 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

The influence of New England men was strong in the Yankee 
regions of the Middle West. Home missionaries, and repre- 
sentatives of societies for the promotion of education in the 
West, both in the common school and denominational col- 
leges, scattered themselves throughout the region and left a 
deep impress in all these States. The conception was firmly 
fixed in the thirties and forties that the West was the coming 
power in the Union, that the fate of civilization was in its 
hands, and therefore rival sects and rival sections strove to 
influence it to their own types. But the Middle West shaped 
all these educational contributions according to her own needs 
and ideals. 

The State Universities were for the most part the result of 
agitation and proposals of men of New England origin; but 
they became characteristic products of Middle Western society, 
where the community as a whole, rather than w^ealthy bene- 
factors, supported these institutions. In the end the commu- 
nity determined their directions in accord with popular ideals. 
They reached down more deeply into the ranks of the common 
people than did the New England or Middle State Colleges; 
they laid more emphasis upon the obviously useful, and 
became coeducational at an early date. This dominance of the 
community ideals had dangers for the Universities, which were 
called to raise ideals and to point new ways, rather than to 
conform. 

Challenging the spaces of the West, struck by the rapidity 
w^ith which a new society was unfolding under their gaze, it 
is not strange that the pioneers dealt in the superlative and 
saw their destiny with optimistic eyes. The meadow lot of 
the small intervale had become the prairie, stretching farther 
than their gaze could reach. 

All was motion and change. A restlessness was universal. 
Men moved, in their single life, from Vermont to New York, 



MIDDLE WESTERN PIONEER DEMOCRACY 355 

from New York to Ohio, from Ohio to Wisconsin, from Wis- 
consin to California, and longed for the Hawaiian Islands. 
When the bark started from their fence rails, they felt the 
call to change. They were conscious of the mobility of their 
society and gloried in it. They broke with the Past and thought 
to create something finer, more fitting for humanity, more 
beneficial for the average man than the world had ever seen. 

" With the Past we have literally npthing to do," said B. 
Gratz Brown in a Missouri Fourth of July oration in 1850, 
" save to dream of it. Its lessons are lost and its tongue is 
silent. We are ourselves at the head and front of all political 
experience. Precedents have lost their virtue and all their 
authority is gone. . . . Experience can profit us only to guard 
from antequated delusions." 

*' The yoke of opinion," wrote Channing to a Western friend, 
speaking of New England, " is a heavy one, often crushing 
individuality of judgment and action," and he added that 
the habits, rules, and criticisms under which he had grown 
up had not left him the freedom and courage which are needed 
in the style of address best suited to the Western people. 
Channing no doubt unduly stressed the freedom of the West 
in this respect. The frontier had its own conventions and 
prejudices, and New England was breaking its own cake of 
custom and proclaiming a new liberty at the very time he 
wrote. But there was truth in the Eastern thought of the 
West, as a land of intellectual toleration, one which questioned 
the old order of things and made innovation its very creed. 

The West laid emphasis upon the practical and demanded 
that ideals should be put to work for useful ends; ideals were 
tested by their direct contributions to the betterment of the 
average man, rather than by the production of the man of 
exceptional genius and distinction. 

For, in fine this was the goal of the Middle West, the wcl- 



356 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

fare of the average man; not only the man of the South, or 
of the East, the Yankee, or the Irishman, or the German, but 
all men in one common fellowship. This was the hope of their 
youth, of that youth when Abraham Lincoln rose from rail- 
splitter to country lawyer, from Illinois legislator to congress- 
man and from congressman to President. 

It is not strange that in all this flux and freedom and novelty 
and vast spaces, the pioneer did not sufficiently consider the 
need of disciplined devotion to the government which he him- 
self created and operated. But the name of Lincoln and the 
response of the pioneer to the duties of the Civil War, — to 
the sacrifices and the restraints on freedom which it entailed 
under his presidency, reminds us that they knew how to take 
part in a conmion cause, even while they knew that war's 
conditions were destructive of many of the things for which 
they worked. 

There are two kinds of governmental discipline: that which 
proceeds from free choice, in the conviction that restraint of 
individual or class interests is necessary for the common good; 
and that which is imposed by a dominant class, upon a sub- 
jected and helpless people. The latter is Prussian discipline, 
the discipline of a harsh machine-like, logical organization, 
based on the rule of a military autocracy. It assumes that if 
you do not crush your opponent first, he will crush you. It 
is the discipline of a nation ruled by its General Staff, assum- 
ing war as the normal condition of peoples, and attempting 
with remorseless logic to extend its operations to the destruc- 
tion of freedom everywhere. It can only be met by the disci- 
pline of a people who use their own government for worthy 
ends, who preserve individuality and mobility in society and 
respect the rights of others, who follow the dictates of human- 
ity and fair play, the principles of give and take. The Prus- 



MIDDLE WESTERN PIONEER DEMOCRACY 357 

sian discipline is the discipline of Thor, the War God, against 
the discipline of the Wliite Christ. ^ 

Pioneer democracy has had to learn lessons by experience: 
the lesson that government on principles of free democracy can 
accomplish many things which the men of the middle of the 
nineteenth century did not realize were even possible. They 
have had to sacrifice something of their passion for individual 
unrestraint; they have had to learn that the specially trained 
man, the man fitted for his calling by education and experience, 
whether in the field of science or of industry, has a place in 
government; that the rule of the people is effective and endur- 
ing only as it incorporates the trained specialist into the organ- 
ization of that government, whether as umpire between con- 
tending interests or as the efficient instrument in the hands of 
democracy. >^ 

Organized democracy after the era of free land has learned 
that popular government to be successful must not only be 
legitimately the choice of the whole people; that the offices 
of that government must not only be open to all, but that 
in the fierce struggle of nations in the field of economic 
competition and in the field of war, the salvation and per- 
petuity of the republic depend upon recognition of the fact 
that specialization of the organs of the government, the choice 
of the fit and the capable for office, is quite as important as 
the extension of popular control. "\^Tien we lost our free lands 
and our isolation from the Old World, we lost our immunity 
from the results of mistakes, of waste, of inefficiency, and of 
inexperience in our government. 

But in the present day we are also learning another lesson 
which was better known to the pioneers than to their imme- 
diate successors. We are learning that the distinction arising 
from devotion to the interests of the commonwealth is a 



358 THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

higher distinction than mere success in economic competition. 
America is now awarding laurels to the men who sacrifice 
their triumphs in the rivalry of business in order to give their 
service to the cause of a liberty-loving nation, their wealth 
and their genius to the success of her ideals. That craving 
for distinction which once drew men to pile up wealth and 
exhibit power over the industrial processes of the nation, is 
now finding a new outlet in the craving for distinction that 
comes from service to the Union, in satisfaction in the use of 
great talent for the good of the republic. 

And all over the nation, in voluntary organizations for aid 
to the government, is being shown the pioneer principle of 
association that was expressed in the "house raising." It 
is shown in the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., the Knights of 
Columbus, the councils and boards of science, commerce, labor, 
agriculture; and in all the countless other types, from the 
association of women in their kitchen v/ho carry out the recom- 
mendations of the Food Director and revive the plain living 
of the pioneer, to the Boy Scouts who are laying the founda- 
tions for a self-disciplined and virile generation worthy to 
follow the trail of the backwoodsmen. It is an inspiring 
prophecy of the revival of the old pioneer conception of the 
obligations and opportunities of neighboriiness, broadening 
to a national and even to an international scope. The prom- 
ise of what that wise and lamented philosopher, Josiah Royce 
called, "the beloved community." In the spirit of the pio- 
neer's " house raising " lies the salvation of the Republic. 

This then is the heritage of pioneer experience, — a passion- 
ate belief that a democracy was possible which should leave 
the individual a part to play in free society and not make 
him a cog in a machine operated from above; which trusted 
in the common man, in his tolerance, his ability to adjust 
diflferences with good humor, and to work out an American 



MIDDLE WESTERN PIONEER DEMOCRACY 359 

type from the contributions of all nations — a type for which 
he would fight against those who challenged it in arms, and 
ior which in time of war he would make sacrifices, even the 
temporary sacrifice of individual freedom and his life, lest that 
freedom be lost forever. 



INDEX 



Absentee proprietors, 55, 297 

Achievement, 309 

Adams, Henry, 213 

Adams, J. Q., 26, 192, 230 

Agriculture, 314, 329; Middle 
West, 149, 150 

Agriculture, Department of, 320 

Alamance, 119, 120 

Alaska, 296 

Albany, 43, 52 

Albany congress of 1754, 15 

Algonquin Indians, 130 

Aliens, land tenure by, 110 

Alleghany Mountains, 9, 18, 67; 
as barrier to be overcome, 195 

Allen, Ethan, 54 

Allen, W. v., 220 

American Historical Assoc., 159 

American history, social forces, 
311; survey of recent, 311 

American life, distinguishing fea- 
ture, 2 

American people, 339 

American spirit, 306, 336, 337 

"American System," 171, 172 

Americanization, effective, 4 

Arid lands, 9, 147, 219, 239, 245, 
278 

Aristocracy, 250, 254, 257, 275 

Army posts, frontier, 16; proto- 
types, 47 

Asia, 296 

Association, voluntary, 343, 344, 
358 

Astor's American Fur Co., 6, 143 

Atlantic coast, as early frontier, 4; 
Mississippi Valley and, 190, 191 ; 

361 



Northern, History, 295 
Atlantic frontier, composition, 12 
Atlantic states, 207, 208 
Augusta, Ga., 98 
Autocracy, 344 

Back country, 68, 70; democracy 
of, 248; New England, 75 

Backwoods society, 212 

Backwoodsmen, 163, 164 

Bacon, Francis, 286 

Bacon's Rebellion, 84, 247, 251, 301 

Baltimore, trade, 108 

Bancroft, George, 168 

Bank, 171, 254, 325 

Bedford, Pa., 5 

Beecher, Lyman, 35 

Bell, John, 192 

Benton, T. H., 26, 35, 192, 325, 328 

Berkshires, 60, 71, 77 

Beverley, Robert, 85, 91; manor, 
92 

" Birch seal," 78 

Black HUls, 145 

Blackmar, F. W., 238 

Blank patents, 95 

Blood-feud, 253 

Blount, William, 187 

Blue Ridge, 90, 99 

Boone, A. J., 19 

Boone, Daniel, 18, 105, 124, 165, 
206 

Boston, trade, 108 

Boutmy, E. G., 211 

Braddock, Edward, 181, 324 

Brattle, Thomas, 56 

British and Middle West, 350 



362 



INDEX 



Brown, B. Gratz, 355 

Brunswick County, Va., 91 

Bryan, W. J., 204, 236, 237, 246, 
281, 327, 329 

Bryce, James, 165, 206, 211, 284 

Buffalo, N. Y., 136, 150, 151 

Buffalo herds, 144 

Buffer state, 131, 134 

Burke, Edmund, 33; on the Ger- 
mans, 109 

Byrd, Col. William, 84, 87, 98 

Calhoun, J. C, 2, 105, 141, 174, 
206, 241; on representation, 117; 
policy of obtaining western trade 
for the South, 196 

California, 8; gold, 144 

Canada, 53, 226; barrier between, 
and the United States, 131; bor- 
der warfare, 44; homesteads, 
296; Middle West and, 128; 
wheat fields, 278 

Canadians, 227 

Canals, deep water, 150 

Capital, 276, 305, 325; concentra- 
tion and combinations, 245, 261, 
266, 280, 30S-306 

" Capitalistic classes," 285 

Capitalists, 20; "expectant," 343 

Capitals, state, transfers, 121 

Captains of industry, 258, 259, 260 

Carnegie, Andrew, 260, 265 

Caroline cow-pens, 16 

Catron, John, 345 

Cattle raising in Virginia, 88, 89, 92 

Census, first, frontier at, 5 

Census of 1820, frontier, 6 

Census of 1890, extinction of fron- 
tier, 1, 9, 38, 39, 297 

Center of nation, 222 

Channing, W. E., 355 

Charleston, S. C, 88, 108, 196 

Chase, S. P., 104, 142 

Cherry Valley, 104 



Chicago, 137, 150, 151, 180, 350; 
character, 232 

Chillicothe, 133, 223 

Cincinnati, 133, 151, 162, 223, 231, 
232 

Cincinnati and Charleston R. R., 
174 

Cities, 297, 316-317; northeastern, 
294-295; seaboard, 194, 195, 
196; three periods of develop- 
ment, 195 

Civil War, 356; Middle West and, 
142; Mississippi Valley and, 201; 
Northwest and, 217 

Clark, G. R., 131, 167, 186 

Clark, J. B., 332 

Class distinctions, 280, 285 

Clay, Henry, 26, 168, 171, 172, 173, 
174, 192, 197, 206, 213, 216, 226, 
241, 304, 325 

Cleaveland, Gen. Moses, 133, 222, 
257 

Cleveland, 133, 150, 223, 231, 232 

Clinton, De Witt, 195, 196 

Coal supply, 313 

Coast, Atlantic, 206; destiny, 295; 
interior and, antagonisms, 110 , 

Coeducation, 353 

Colden, Cadwallader, 80 

Colonial life, 11 

Colonial system, 127 

Colonization, 312; English and 
French contrasted, 13-14; peace- 
ful, 169 

Colony of free humanity, 337-338 

Columbus, Ohio, 162, 229 

Combinations of capital and of la- 
bor, 245 

Commencement seasons, 290 

Commons, J. R., 327 

Community, " beloved community," 
358; life, 347; type of settle- 
ment, 73, 74, 125 

Competition, 154, 203, 277, 308, 312 



INDEX 



363 



Compromise, 174, 198, 230, 236; 

slavery, 140, 142 
Concentration of power and wealth, 

245, 261, 266, 280 
Concord, Mass., 39 
Concurrent majority, 118 
Congregational church, 74, 112 
Congress and frontiersmen, 252- 

253 
Connecticut, frontier towns, 42, 45, 

53; land policy, 76 
Connecticut River, 52, 53, 72 
Connecticut Valley, 63, 73 
Conquest, 269 
Conscience, American, 328 
Constitution, U. S., 209, 244 
Constitutional convention of 1787, 

249 
Constitutions, state, 121, 252, 352; 

reconstruction, 192 
Cooperation, voluntary, 165, 257, 

258 
Corn, areas, 149; belt, 151 
Corporations, 265, 328 
Cotton culture, 28, 139, 255; early 

extension, 7; transfer from the 

East to Mississippi Valley, 194 
" Cotton Kingdom," 174, 189, 194, 

198 
Coureurs de hois, 182 
Cow pens, 16, 88 
Crockett, Davy, 105 
Crops, migration, 149 
Currency, 148; evil, 32; expansion, 

210 
Cutler, Manasseh, 141 

Dairy interests in Wisconsin, 234, 

236 
Dakotas, settlement, 145, 146 
Darien, Ga., 98 

Davis, JeflFerson, 105, 139, 174 
De Bow, J. D. B., 197 
Pe Bow's Review, 217 



Debs, E. v., 281 

Dedham, 40, 58 

Deerfield, 48, 52, 58, 70 

Democracy, 32, 54, 306; doubts of, 
280; established in Old West, 
107; free land and, 274; frontier, 
early, 106; frontier and, 30, 31, 
247, 249; Gookin on, 307; in 
early 18th century, 98; Jack- 
sonian, 192, 302, 342-343; Jeffer- 
sonian, 250, 251; magnitude of 
achievement in tlie West, 258; 
Middle West, 154; Mississippi 
Valley, 183; neighborhood, 346; 
new type in West, 210, 216; Ohio 
Valley, inliuence, 172; Ohio Val- 
ley and, 175; organized, 357; 
origin, 293; outcome of Ameri- 
can experiences, 266; pressure 
on the universities, 283; signifi- 
cance of Mississippi Valley in 
promoting, 190; Upland South, 
165; Western contributions, 243; 
Western ideals, 261 ; see also Pio- 
neer democracy 

Democratic parly, 327, 329; basis, 
248; Middle Western wing, 352 

Democratic-Republican party, 250 

Denver, Coio.. 19 

De Tocqueviile. 5ee Tocqueviile 

Detroit, 135, 150 

Development, American, 205, 221; 
fom- changes, 244; personal, 271; 
significant decade, 246-247; 
study of, 10; true point of view, 
3; Western, 218 

D'lberville. See Iberville 

Discovery, 270, 293, 301, 306 

Doddridge, Joseph, 115 

Dogs for hunting Indians, 45 

Douglas, S. A., 140; Lincoln de- 
bates, 230 

Douglass, William, 109 

Down east, 79 



364 



INDEX 



Dracut, 111 
Dreams, 301, 339 
Duel, 253 

Duluth, 150, 151, 234 
Dunkards, 263 
Dunstable, 48, 56 
Duquesne, Abraham, 14 
Dwight, Timothy (1752-1817), 63; 
fears of pioneer class, 251 

East, efforts to restrict advance of 
frontier, 33, 34; fears of the 
West, 208; out of touch with 
West, 18 

Economic forces and political in- 
stitutions, 243 

Economic historian, 332 

Economic legislation and Ohio Val- 
ley, 170 

Education, 282; Middle West, 156 

Edwards, Jonathan, 63 

Egleston, Melville, 55 

Eliot, C. W., on corporation, 265; 
on democracy and slavery, 256 

Emerson, R. W., 353; on Lincoln, 
256 

England, decrease of dependence 
on, 23; Mississippi Valley and, 
180, 186; Old Northwest and, 
131, 134 

English pioneers, 270 

English settlers in Michigan and 
Wisconsin, 226 

English stock and English speech, 
23 

Equality, 274; New England, 61, 
62, 63; Western settlers, 212 

Erie Canal, 7, 136, 195, 197 

Europe, American democracy and, 
282; how America reacted on, 
3; Southeastern, 294, 295, 316 

Europeans, 267 

Evolution, American, as key to his- 
tory, 11 



Expansion, 206, 219, 304, 345; Ohio 
Valley and, 166; world politics, 
246 

Experts, 284, 285, 286 

"Fall line," 4, 9, 68; efforts to 

establish military frontier on, 84 
Fairfax, Lord, 92, 123 
Far East, 315 
Far West, 315, 341 
Farm lands, 297 
Farm machinery, 276 
Farmers, 238, 239 
Farmer's frontier, 12, 16, 18 
Federal colonial system, 168, 169 
Federal Reserve districts, 322 
Fertility, 129 
Field, Marshall, 265 
Finance, 318, 325; pioneer ideas, 

148 
Fire-arms and Indians, 13 
Firmin, Giles, 56 
Food supply, 279, 294, 314 
Foreign parentage, Indiana and 

Illinois, 232; Michigan, 233; 

Western States, 237; Wisconsin, 

233-234 
Foreign policy, 168, 219 
Foreign Service, 320 
Forest philosophy, 207 
" Foresters," 63 
Forests, 270, 293; Middle West, 

130 
Fortified houses, 71 
Fourierists, 263 
France, efforts to revive empire in 

America, 167; Middle West and, 

131; Mississippi VaUey and, 180, 

186; western exploration, 163; 
Franchise, 249-250, 252 
Franklin, Benjamin, Mississippi 

Valley and, 182 ; on the Germans, 

109 
Free Soil party, 141, 173, 217 



INDEX 



365 



French explorers, 163 

French frontier, 125 

French Huguenots, 105 

French settlers in Michigan and 
Wisconsin, 226 

Frontier, conservative attitude to- 
ward advance, 63; definition, 3, 
41; demand for independent 
statehood, 248; efforts to check 
and restrict it, 33; ;evil effects, 
32; extinction, 1, 9, 38, 39, 321; 
farmers, 239, 240; first official, 
39, 54; French, 125; importance 
as a military training school, 15; 
influence toward democracy, 247, 
249; kinds and, modes of ad- 
vance, 12; Massachusetts, 65; 
military, of Old l^est, 106-107; 
religious aspects, 36; Spanish, 
125; towns in Massachusetts, 42, 
45, 53, 70; various comparisons, 
10 

Frontiersmen, 206, 209, 212; in 
Congress, 252-253; Mississippi 
Valley, 182; Virgmia idea, 86 

Fulton, Robert, 171 

Fur trade, 13; England after Revo- 
lution, 131; Hudson River, 80; 
Southern, Old West, 87 



Gallatin, Albert, 191, 252, 317 

Galveston, 202 

Garfield, J. A., 241 

Geographic factors, 329 

Geographic provinces, 158 

Georgia, 174, 196; restriction of 
land tenure, 97; settlement, 97 

Germanic germs, 3, 4 

Germans, 263; in New York in 
early times, 5; Middle West and, 
137-138, 146; Palatine, 5, 32, 82, 
100, 109, 124; political exiles, 
349; sectaries, 164; Wisconsin, 



23, 227, 236; zone of settlement 

in Great Valley, 102 
Glarus, 236 
Godkin, E. L., 307 
Glenn, James, 23, 108 
Goochland County, Va., 93 
Government, 321; paternal, 328; 

popular, 357 
Government discipline, 356 
Government expeditions, 17 
Government intervention, 344 
Government ownership, 148 
Government powers, 307 
Government regulation, 281 
Granger movement, 148, 203, 218, 

276, 281 
Grant, U. S., 142 
Granville, Lord, 95, 123 
Great Lakes, 128, 149, 150, 173, 297 
Great Plams, 8, 128, 147; Indian 

trade and war, 144 
Great Valley, 100; colonization, 

100-101 
Greater South, 174 
Greeley, Horace, 104. 
Green Mountain Boys, 78 
Greenback movement, 148, 203, 

218, 276 
Greenway manor, 92 
Groseilliers, 180 
Groton, 48, 57 
Grund, F. J., 7 
Grundy, Felix, 192 
Gulf coast, 295 
Gulf States, 141; occupation, 139 

Hammond, J. H., on slavery prob- 
lem in the Mississippi Valley, 198 

Hanna, Marcus, 265 

Harriman, E. H., 280, 318 

Harrison, W. H., 168, 173, 189, 192, 
213, 255 

Hart. A. B., 177 

Hartford, 76 



366 



INDEX 



Haverhill, 51, 62 

Hayes, R. B., 241 

Henry, Patrick, 95 

Heroes, 254, 256; Western, 213 

High thinking, 287 

Higher law. 239 

Hill, J. J., 260 

Historian, 333 

Historic ideals, 306, 335 

Historical societies, 159-160, 339 

History, character, 331-332; new 
viewpoints, 330 

Holland. J. G., 73 

Hoist, H. E. von, 24 

Home markets, 108, 216 

Home missions, 36, 354 

Homestead law of 1862, 145, 276 

Hoosier State, 224 

Housatonic River, 71 

Housatonic Valley, 72 

Houston. Sam, 105 

Howells, W. D., 353 

Hudson River, 53, 79; frontier, 43; 
fur trade, 80 

Humanitarian movement, 327 

Huxley, T. H., on modern civiliza- 
tion, 300 

Iberville, P. le M. d', 180 

Icarians, 263 

Idealists, America the goal, 261; 
social, 349 

Ideals, 239; American, and the 
West, 290; American, loyalty to, 
307 ; American historic, 306, 335 ; 
immigrants, 264; Middle West, 
153; Mississippi VaUey, 203; 
pioneer, and the State university, 
269; readjustment, 321, 328; 
Western, 209, 214, 267; Western 
democracy and, 261 

Illinois, composite nationality, 232; 
elements of settlement, 225; set- 
tlement, 135 



Illiteracy in Middle West, 353 

Immigrants, 277; idealism, 264 

Immigration, 146, 215, 316 

Indian guides, 17 

Indian policy, 10 

Lidian question, early, 9 

Indian reservations, 278 

Indian trade, 6, 13, 14; Middle 
West, 143, 144 

Indian wars, 9; New England and, 
69; Ohio Valley and, 167 

Indiana, character, 232; constitu- 
tion, 282; elements in settlement, 
223-224; settlement, 134 

Indianapolis, 162, 229 

Indians, buffer state for England, 
131, 134; congresses to treat 
with, 15; effects of trades on, 13; 
hunting Indians with dogs, ^^5; 
influence on Puritans and New 
England, 44; Middle West and, 
133, 134: society, 13 

Individualism, 30, 32, 37, 78, 125, 
140, 203, 254, 259, 271, 273, 302, 
306; in the Old West, 107; reac- 
tion against, 307; Upland South, 
165 

Industrial conditions, 280, 281, 
285; Middle West, 149, 154; 
Mississippi Valley, 194, 201; 
Ohio Valley and, 175 

Industry, captains of, and large 
undertakings, 258, 259, 260; con^ 
trol, 318 

Inland waterways, 202 

Insurgent movement, 327 

Intellectual life and tlie frontier^ 
37 

Intercolonial congresses, 15 
Interior and coast, antagonisms, 
110 

Internal commerce, 171, 188 
Internal improvements, 27, 28, 29, 
111, 170, 172, 216, 257; aft«r 



INDEX 



367 



1812 to break down barrier to 
West, 195; Old West, 109 

Inlernal trade. Old West, 108, 109 

Iowa, 141, 143; elements and 
growth, 229; settlement, 137 

Ipswich, 56 

Irish, 350 

Iron mines in Middle West, 152 

Iron ore, 313 

Iroquois Indians, 13, 80 

Irrigation, 258, 279 

Isms, 239 

Izard, Ralph, 274 

Jackson, Andrew, 105, 168, 173, 
189, 206, 213, 216, 241, 252, 253, 
268, 326; personification of fron- 
tier traits, 252, 254 

Jackson, Stonewall, 105 

Jacksonian democracy, 192, 302, 
342-343 

James River, 84, 90; settlement, 93 

Jefferson, Thomas, 93, 105, 114, 
268; conception of democracy, 
250, 251 ; on England and the 
Mississippi, 186; on the pioneer 
in Congress, 253; on the impor- 
tance of the Mississippi Valley, 
188 

"Jim River" Valley, 145 

Johnson, R. M., 192 

Johnson, Sir William, 81, 104 

Justice, direct forms in the West, 
212 



Kansas, 142, 144, 146, 151; Popu- 
lists, 238; settlers, 237 

Kansas City, 151 

Kentucky, 19, 122, 162, 167, 168, 
169, 192, 225, 253; slavery, 174 

King Philip's War 40, 46, 69 

Kipling, Rudyard, " Toreloper," 
270; "Son of the English," 262 



Labor, combinations, 245 ; composi- 
tion of laboring class, 316 

Labor theorists, 303, 326 

Lamar, L. Q. C. (1825-1893), 25 

Lancaster, Mass., 48, 57, 61 

Land, 328-329; abundance, 274; 
abundance, as basis of democ- 
racy, 191, 192; alien tenure, 110; 
free, exhausted, 244-245; free 
Western, 211, 259; fundamental 
fact in Western society, 211; 
" mongering,"' 61; see also Public 
lands 

Land companies, 123, 347 

Land grants, 9; for schools and 
colleges, 74; to railroads, 276 

Land Ordinance of 1785, 132 

Land policies, 10 

Land system, " equality " principle 
in New England, 61, 62, 63; 
Georgia, 97; later federal, 123; 
New England, 54; New England 
conflicts, 75; New York State, 
80; North Carolina, 95; Old 
West, 122; Pennsylvania, 101; 
Virginia, 91; Virginia grants to 
societies, 85 

La Salle, 180 

Laurentide glacier, 129 

Law and order, 298, 344 

Leadership, 213, 291, 292, 307; 
educated, 286 

Lease, Mary Ellen, 240 

Legislation, 277, 307; frontier and, 
24; Leicester, 59; Leigh, B. W., 
115 

Lewis and Clark, 13, 17 

Liberty, Bacon on, 286 : for univer- 
sities, 287; individual, 213; 
Western, 212 

Life as a whole, 287 

Lincoln, Abraham, 105, 135. 142, 
174, 206, 213, 217, 225, 241 268, 
304 356; Douglas debates 230; 



368 



INDEX 



embodiment of pioneer period, 
255-256; Ohio Valley, influence 
of, 175 

Lincoln, C H , 113 

Litchfield, 71, 76, 124 

Livingston manor, 81, 82 

Locofocos, 303, 326, 348 

Log cabin, 338 

" Log cabin campaign," 173 

London Company, 301 

Loria, Achille, 11 

Louisiana, 180, 208 

Louisiana Purchase, 25, 34, 140, 
167, 213, 251; effect on Missis- 
sippi Valley, 189-190 

Louisville, 162 

Lowell, J. R., on Lincoln, 255 

Loyal Land Co., 123, 182 

Lumber industry, 152; Wisconsin, 
234-235 

Lumbermen, 272, 273 

Lynch law, 212, 272; New Eng- 
land, 78 

McKinley, William, 236, 237, 241 

Magnitude, 258, 260, 276 

Maine, 52-53 

Maine coast, 79 

Mallet brothers, 180 

Manila, battle of, 247 

Manorial practice in New York, 83 

Marietta, 124, 132, 223, 257 

" Mark colonies," 70 

Marquette, Jacques, 180 

Martineau, Harriet, 214, 303, 339 

Massachusetts, attempt to locate 
frontier line, 39; frontier, 65; 
frontier towns, 42, 45, 53, 70; 
locating towns before settlement, 
76 

Mather, Cotton, attitude as to ad- 
vancing frontier, 63 

Mesabi mines, 152, 234 

Mendon, 57 



Methodists, 238 

Mexico, 295 

Michigan, 135-136, 137; develop- 
ment and resources, 232; settle- 
ment, 226, 228 

Middle region, 27; in formation of 
the Old West, 79; typical Ameri- 
can, 28 

Middle West, agriculture, 150; 
Canada and, 128; Civil War and, 
142; early society, 153-154; edu- 
cation, 282; elements of settle- 
ment — Northern and Southern, 
346, 351; Europe and, 282; flow 
of population into, 132-133; for- 
ests, 130; Germans and, 137- 
138; Germans and Scandina- 
vians, 146; idealism, 153; immi- 
grants of varied nationalities, 
349; importance, 126, 128; in- 
crease of settlement in the fifties, 
142-143; industrial organism, 
149; meaning of term, 126; na- 
tionalism, 142 ; natural resources, 
129; New England element, 137; 
peculiarity and influence, 347; 
pioneer democracy, 335; settle- 
ment, 135, 342; slavery question 
and, 139; southern zone, 138 

Migration, 21, 237, 337; communal 
vs. individual, 125; crops, 149; 
interstate, 224; labor, 62; New 
England, and land policy, 77 

Militant expansive movement, 105 

Military frontier, 41, 47; early 
form, 47; Old West, significance, 
106-107; Virginia in later 17th 
century, 83. 84 

Milwaukee, 137, 227, 236, 350 

Miner's frontier, 12 

Mining camps, 9 

Mining laws, 10 

Minneapolis, 137, 151, 234 

Minnesota, 143, 144, 237 ; economic 



LNDEX 



369 



development, 234; Historical So- 
ciety, 335, 33^-339 

Missions to the Indians, 79 

Mississippi Company, 123, 182 

Mississippi River, 7, 9, 142, 185, 
194, 345 

Mississippi Valley, 10, 139, 166- 
167, 324; beginning of stratifica- 
tion, 197; Civil War and, 201; 
democracy and, 190; early popu- 
lation, 183; economic progress 
after 1812, 194 ; England's efforts 
to control, 180-181; extent, 179; 
French explorers in, 180; fron- 
tiersmen's allegiance, 186-187; 
idealism, social order, 203-204; 
industrial growth after the Civil 
War, 201-202; political power 
and growth from 1810 to 1840, 
193; primitive history, 179; ques- 
tion of severance from the Union, 
187; significance in American 
history, 177, 185 ; slavery struggle 
and, 201; social forces, early, 
183 

Missouri, 192 

Missouri Compromise, 140, 174, 226 

Missouri Valley, 135 

Mohawk Valley, 68, 82 

Monroe, James, 150 

Monroe Doctrine, 296; germ, 168 

Monticello, 93 

Moravians, 95, 102 

Morgan, J. P., 318 

Mormons, 263 

Morris, Gouvemeur, 207 

Nashaway, 57 

National problem, 293 

Nationalism, 29; evils of, 157; Mid- 
dle West and, 142 

Nationalities, mixture, 27; replace- 
ment in Wisconsin, 235 

Naturalization, 110 



Nebraska, 144, 145, 220; settlers, 
237 

Negro, 295 

New England, 27, 301 ; back lands, 
75; coast vs. interior, 111; colo- 
nies from, 124; culmination of 
frontier movement, 78; early of- 
ficial frontier line, 43; economic 
life, 78; effect on the West, 36: 
foreign element, 294; frontier 
protection, 46-47; frontier types, 
43-44; Greater New England, 66, 
70; ideas, and Middle West, 348; 
Indian wars, 69; land system, 54; 
Middle West and, 347 ; Ohio set- 
tlement and, 223; Old West and, 
68; Old West and interior New 
England, 70; pioneer type, 239; 
streams of settlement from, 215; 
two New Englands of the forma- 
tive period of the Old West, 78- 
79 

New Englanders in the Middle 
West, 137; in Wisconsin and the 
lake region, 228; three move- 
ments of advance from the coast, 
136; Westernized, 215, 216 

New GIdrus, 236 

New Hampshire, 69, 72, 77, 111 

New Hampshire grants, 77 

New Northwest, 222 

New Orleans, 136, 137, 167, 187, 
188, 189, 217, 295 

New South, 218; Old West and, 100 

New West, 257 

New York City, 136, 195, 318 

New York State, early frontier, 43; 
lack of expansive power, 80; 
land system, 80; settlement from 
New England, 83; western, 230 

Newspapers of the Middle West, 
353 

Nitrates, 279 

Norfolk, 195 



370 



INDEX 



North Carolina, 87, 106; coast vs. 
upland, 116; in Indiana Settle- 
ment, 224; public lands, 95; set- 
tlement, 94, 95 ; slavery, 122 ; tax- 
ation, 118, 119 

North Central States, 126; region 
as a whole, 341 

North Dakota, development, 237 

Northampton, 63 

Northfield, 53 

Northwest, democracy, 356; Old 
and Mew, 222; see also Old 
Northwest 

Northwest Territory, 222 

Northwestern boundary, 324 

Norton, C. E., 208-209 

Norwegians, 232 

Nullification, 117, 254 

Ohio, diversity of interests, 231- 
232; elements of settlement, 223; 
history, 133-134; New England 
element, 223; Southern contribu- 
tion to settlement, 223 

Ohio Company, 123, 133, 141, 182, 
223 

Ohio River, 5, 161 

Ohio Valley, 104; as a highway, 
162; economic legislation and, 
170; effects on national expan- 
sion, 166; in American history, 
157; influence on Lincoln, 175; 
part in making of the nation, 
160; physiography, 160-161; re- 
lation to the South, 174; reli- 
gious spirit, 164, 165; stock and 
settlement, 164 

Oil wells, 297 

Oklahoma, 278, 297 

Old National road, 136 

Old Northwest, 131, 132, 136, 221; 
as a whole, 241-242; defined, 
218; elements of settlement, 
222; political position, 236; so- 



cial origin, 222-223; Southern 
element in settlement, 223, 225- 
226; turning point of control, 
229 

"Old South," 166 

Old West, colonization of areas be- 
yond the mountains, 124; conse- 
quences of formation, 106; New 
South and, 100; summary of 
frontier movement in 17th and 
early 18th centuries, 98; term 
defined, 68 

Old World, 261, 267, 294, 299, 344, 
349; effect of American frontier, 
22; West and, 206, 210 

Opportunity, 37, 212, 239, 259-260, 
261, 263, 271-272, 342, 343 

Orangeburg, 96 

Ordinance of 1787, 25, 132, 168, 
190, 223 

Oregon country, 144 

Orient, 297 

Osgood, H. L., 30 

Pacific coast, 168, 219, 304 
Pacific Northwest, 296 
Pacific Ocean, 297, 315 
Packing industries, 151 
Palatine Germans, 5, 22, 100, 109, 

124; New York State and, 82 
Palisades, 71 
Panama Canal, 295 
Panics, 279-280 
Paper money, 32, 111, 121, 122, 

209 
Parkman, Francis, 70, 72, 144, 163 
" Particular plantations," 41 
Past, lessons of, 355 
Patroon estates, 80 
Paxton Boys, 112 
Pecks "New Guide to the West," 

19 
Penn, William, 262 
Pennsylvania, 23, 27; coast and 



INDEX 



371 



interior, antagon'sms, 112; Ger- 
man settlement, 82, 100; Great 
Valley of, 68, 164; land grants, 
101; new Pennsylvania of the 
Great VaUey, 100; Scotch-Irish, 
103, 104; settlement of Old West 
part, 83 

Pennsylvania Dutch, 22, 100, 110 

Perrot, Nicolas, 180 

Philadelphia, 106; trade, 103 

Physiographic provinces, 127 

Piedmont, 68; Virginia, 87, 89 

Pig iron, 152, 313 

Pine, 151 

Pine belt in Middle West, 143 

Pioneer democracy, lessons learned, 
357; Middle West, 335 

Pioneer farmers, 21, 206, 257 

Pioneers, conservative fears about, 
251, 252; contest with capitalist, 
325; contrast of conditions, 279; 
deeper significance, 338; essence, 
271; ideals and the State uni- 
versity, 269; Middle West, 146, 
154; Ohio Valley. 167; old 
ideals, 148; sketch, 19 

Pittsburgh, 104, 127, 136, 154-155, 
161, 265, 299, 314, 324 

Plain people, 256, 267 

Political institutions, 243; frontier 
and, 24 

Political parties, 249, 324 

Polk, J. K., 105, 192, 255 

Pontiac, 131, 144 

Poor whites, 224 

Population center, 222 

Populists. 32, 127, 147, 155, 203, 
220, 247, 277, 281, 305; Kansas, 
238 

Prairie Plains, 129 

Prairie states, 239 

Prairies, 218, 236, 276, 348; settle- 
ment, 145, 147 

Presbyterians, 105, 106, 109, 164 



Presidency, 254; Mississippi Valley 

and, 192; Ohio Valley and, 175; 

Old Northwest and, 222 
Prices, 313 

Princeton college, 106 
Pritchett, H. S., 282 
Privilege, 192; conflict against, 

120, 121 
Proclamation of 1763, 181 
Progressive Republican movement, 

321 
Prohibitionists, 240 
" Proletariat," 285 
Property, 210; as basis of suflFrage, 

249 
Prosperity, 281 
Protection. See Tariff 
Provinces, geographic, 158 
Provincialism, desirable, 157, 159 
Prussianism, 337, 356 
Public lands, 25, 132, 303; policy 

of America, 26, 170; Western 

lands, first debates on, 191 
Public schools, 266, 282 
Puget Sound, 298 
Puritan ideals, 73, 75, 78; German 

conflict with, 138 
Puritanism, 27 
Puritans and Indians, 44 
Purr>'sburg, 97 
Pyrichon, John, 51, 52 

Quakers, 105, 112, 164; in settle- 
ment of Indiana, 224 
Quebec, Province of, 131 
Quincy, Josiah, 208 

Radisson, Sieur de, 180 

Railroads, administration by re- 
gions, 322; Chicago and, 150; 
continental, 247; in early fifties, 
137; land grants to, 276; Mis- 
sissippi Valley, 304; northwest- 
em, 145; origin, 14; speculatiye 



372 



INDEX 



movement, 276; statistics, 314; 

western, 218 
Rancher's frontier, 12, 16 
Ranches, 9, 16 ; Virginia, 88 
Rappahannock River, 84, 90; set- 
tlement, 93 
Reclamation, 298 
Reclamation Service, 320 
Red Cloud (Indian), 144 
Red River valley, 145 
Redemptioners, 22, 90, 97, 100 
Reformers, 281, 324; social, 262- 

263 
Regulation, War of the, 248 
Regulators, 116, 119. 120, 212 
Religion of the Middle West, 345 
Religious freedom of the Old \^'est, 

121 
Religious spirit, Ohio Valley, 164, 

165; Upland South, 164, 165 
Rensselaerswyck, 80 
Representation, 114, 117, 120 
Republican party, 327 
Research, 284, 287, 331 
Revolution, American, 30 
Rhodes, J. F., 24 
Richmond, Va,, 108 
Rights, equal, 326-327, 338; of 

man, 192 
Ripley, W. Z., 316 
Robertson, James, 105, 187 
Rockefeller, J. D., 260, 264-265 
Rocky Mountains, 8, 9, 10, 298 
Roosevelt, Theodore, 202, 204, 281, 

319, 327; on the Mississippi Val- 

lev, 178; "Winning of the 

West," 67 
Root, Elihu, 159 
Roxbury, 59 
Royce, Josiah, 157, 358 
Rush, Richard, 317 

St. Louis, 151, 161, 229 
St. Paul, 137, 234 



Salisbury, Mass., 56 

Salt, 17 ; annual pilgrimage to ^ 

coast for, 17 
Salt springs, 17, 18 
Salzburgers, 97 
Sandys, Sir Edwin, 301 
Sault Ste. Marie Canal, 149 
Scalps, Massachusetts bounty for, 

45 
Scandinavians, 263, 350; Middle 

West, 146; Western life, 232- 

233, 234 
Schools, early diflSculties, 107; see 

also Public schools 
Schurz, Carl, 337 
Science, 284, 330-331 
Scientific farming, 294 
Scotch Highlanders, 104; Georgia, 

98 
Scotch-Irish, 5, 22, 71; migration 

in Great Valley and Piedmont, 

103; Pennsylvania, 104; South 

Carolina, 97; Virginia, 86, 91- 

92 
Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, 105, 

109, 164 
Scovillites, 116 

Seaboard cities, 194, 195y 196 
Seattle, 298 

" Section " of land, 123, 132 
Sectionalism, 27, 28, 52, 157, 215, 

220, 321 
Sections, relation, 159 
Self-government, 169, 190, 207, 248, 

275 
Self-made man, 219, 318 
Servants, 60, 353 
Service to the Union, 358 
Settlement, community type, 73, 

74 
Settler, 20 

Sevier, John, 105. 187 
Seward, W. H., 141 ; on the North- 
west, 230; on the slavery issue 



INDEX 



373 



in the Mississippi Valley, 199, 
200 

Shays' Rebellion, 112, 119, 122, 249 

Sheffield, 71 

Sheldon, George, 58 

Shenandoah Valley, 68, 90, 91, 92, 
99, 105 

Sherman, W. T., 142 

Sibley, H. H. (1811-1891), 272, 
273, 328 

Silver movement, 238, 239, 329 

Simsbury, 63 

Singletar>', Amos, 240 

Sioux Indians, 130 

Six Nations, 15, 83 

Slavery question, 24, 29, 98, 111, 
139, 304, 330; compromise move- 
ment, 174; democracy and, 256; 
expansion, 174; Middle West 
and, 139; Mississippi Valley and, 
198, 201; Northwest and, 230; 
slaves as property, 115; Virginia 
and North Carolina, 122 

Smith, Major Lawrence, 84 

Social control, 277 

Social forces, in American history, 
311; mode of investigating, 330; 
on the Atlantic coast, 295; 
political institutions and, 

243 

Social mobility, 355 

Social order, Mississippi Valley, 
203-204; new, 263 

Social reformers, 262-263 

Socialism, 246, 277, 307, 321 

Society, backwoods, 212; rebirth 
of in the West, 205 

Soils, 278, 279; search for, 18 

Solid South, 217 

South, 27, 166, 218; contribution 
to settlement of Old Northwest 
(Ohio, Indiana, Illinois), 223, 
225-226; Ohio Valley and. 174; 
solid, 217; transforming forces, 



295; West and, 196, 197; sec 
also Upland South 

South Carolina, 174; condition of 
antagonism between coabt and in- 
terior, 116; land system, town- 
ships, %; trade, 108 

South Dakota, development, 237 

Southeastern Europe, 294, 299, 316 

Southerners and the Middle West, 
133-134, 135, 138 

Southwest, 297 

Spain, 167, 181, 246; Mississippi 
Valley and, 184, 185 

Spangenberg, A. G,, 17 

Spanish America 181, 182, 295 

Spanish frontier, 125 

Spanish War, 246 

Speculation, 319 

Spoils system, 32, 254 

Spotswood, Alexander, 22, 88, 90, 
91, 113, 247; Mississippi Valley 
and, 180 

Spotsylvania County, Va., 90 

Spreckles, Claus, 265 

Squatter-sovereignty, 140 

Squatters, 272, 343; doctrines, 273, 
328; ideal, 320; xMiddle West, 
137; Ohio Valley, 170; Pennsyl- 
vania in 1726, 101 

Stark, John, 103-104 

State historical societies, 340 

State lines, 127 

State universities, 221, 354; as safe- 
guard of democracy, 286; Michi- 
gan, 233; peculiar power, 283- 
284; pioneer ideals and. 269, 281 

States, checkerboard, 218; frontier 
pioneers' demand for statehood, 
248; groups, 159; new states vs. 
Atlantic States, 207; System of, 
168 

Staunton, Va., 92 

Steam navigation, 7, 155, 171 

Steel, 313 



374 



INDEX 



Steel and iron industry, 152 

Stockbridge, 79 

Stoddard, Solomon, 45 

Success, 288, 309 

Sudbury, 39 

Suffrage, 192, 216; basis, 249; 
frontier and extension, 30; man- 
hood, 250, 352 

Superior, Lake, 180, 314; iron 
mines, 152 

Swedes, 233 

Symmes Purchase, 223 

Talleyrand, 299 

Taney, R. B., 141 

Tariff, 25, 27, 170, 172, 197, 216 

Taylor, Zachary, 255 

Tecumthe, 134, 144 

Tennessee, 122, 168, 187, 225, 252, 
253; democracy, 192 

Tennyson's '" Ulysses," 310 

Territories, system of, 168, 169 

Texas, 168 

Thomas, J. B., 174 

Tocqueville, A. C. H. C. de, 153, 
275, 303, 343 

Toledo, Ohio, 231 

Toleration, 355 

Town meeting, 62 

Towns, legislating into existence, 
125; locating, Massachusetts, 76; 
New England and Virginia, 41; 
new settlements in New England, 
55; South Carolina, 96; typical 
form of establishing in New Eng- 
land, 74; Virginia, 85, 86 

Trader's frontier, 12; effects fol- 
lowing, 12; rapidity of advance, 
12, 13 

Trading posts, 14 

Transportation, 148; Great Lakes, 
150 

Tryon, William, 106 

Tuscarora War, 94, 95 



Ulstermen, 103 

Unification of the West, 215 

United States, collection of na- 
tions, 158; development since 
1890, 311; federal aspect, 159; 
fundamental forces, 311; original 
contribution to society, 281-282; 
wealth, 312 

U. S. Steel Corporation, 152-153, 
247, 265, 313 

Universities, duties, 292; function, 
287; influence of university men, 
285; need of freedom, 287; pres- 
sure of democracies on, 283; 
State and, 286; see also State 
universities 

Upland South, 164; religious spirit, 
164, 165 

Van Buren, Martin, 254, 326 

Van Rensselaer manor, 81 

Vandalia, 229 

Verendryes, the, 180 

Vermont, 69, 72, 77, 78, 111, 122, 
136 

Vermonters in Wisconsin and 
Michigan, 228 

Vicksburg, 201 

Vigilance committees, 212 

Vinton, S. F., 141, 229 

Virginia, 301; early attempt to es- 
tablish frontier, 41 ; Indian wars, 
69-70; inequalities, coast vs. ' 
interior, 113; interest in Missis- 
sippi Valley, 182; land grants, 
91; land grants to societies, 85; 
Piedmont, society, 95; Piedmont 
portions, 87, 89; settlement in 
latter part of 17th century, 83; 
slavery, 122; two Virginias in 
later 17th century, 94; Western 
democracy and, 250 

Virginia Convention of 1829-30, 
28,31 



INDEX 



iO 



Visions, 270, 331, 339-340 
Voyageurs, 17 

Wachovia, 95 

Walker, F. A., 128 

War of 1812, 168, 213 

Washington, George, 92, 124; Mis- 
sissippi Valley and, 181, 182, 
194, 196, 324; Ohio Valley and, 
163, 167 

Wealth, 213-214, 219, 288, 319; 
democracy versus, 192; in poli- 
tics, 173; United States, 312 

Wells (town), 47 

" Welsh tract," 97 

Wentworth, Benning, 77 

West, American ideals and, 290; 
beginning of, 6; center of in; 
terest, 327; constructive force, 
206; contributions to democracy, 
243; factor in American history, 
1, 3; ideals, 209, 214, 267; in- 
definiteness of term, 126; insur- 
gent voice, 319; main streams of 
settlement, 215; mark of New 
England, 36; phase of division, 
216-217; population, 35; prob- 
lem of, 205; South and, 196, 
197; war ings against, 208, 209; 
Middle West; see also Old West; 
Old Northwest 

West Virginia, 114 

Westchester County, N. Y., 81 



Western colleges, 36 

Western life, dominant forces, 222 

Western Reserve, 124, 133 

Western spirit, 310 

"Western Waters," 161, 206, 302; 
men of freedom and independ- 
ence, 183 

"Western World," 161, 166, 206, 
302; basis of its civilization, 177 

Wheat, 329; areas, 149 

Whig party, 27, 173, 304, 351 

White, Abraham, 240 

White, Hugh, 192 

Whitman, Walt, 336 

Wilderness, 262, 269, 270, 279 

Wilkinson, James, 169, 187 

Williams, John (1664^1729), 70 

Williams, Roger, 262 

Windsor, 76 

Winthrop, John, 62 

Wisconsin, 137, 138, 218, 294, 341 ; 
development and elements, 233- 
234; German element, 227, 228, 
236; New England element, 228; 
settlement, 226, 227 

Wood, Abraham, 98 

Woodstock, 59 

World's fairs, 156 

World-politics, 246, 315 

Wyoming Valley, 79, 124 

Yemassee War, 95 

"Young America" doctrine, 140 



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